We got to Sihanoukville with high hopes as this has now become the country's premier beach resort. The fact is that it is still work in progress with a fair bit of building work going on. The roads were a bit hit and miss too with a mix of completed and unmade roads, especially connecting one of the roads with Serendipity beach.

We arrived to the bus depot, which is about 3km from the main beach, as it was just starting to get dark. As ever, the tuk-tuk and taxi drivers descended on the coach trying to pick up a fare. We grabbed a US$3 tuk-tuk but had forgotten to note which hotels and guest houses had responded to our email a couple of days earlier asking about availability and prices. The only name we could remember was the Reef Resort. Fortunately, this was the top pick on tripadvisor.com. We stayed there for four nights in total and were rather chuffed to get the price down from US$45 to US$30 per night, especially as it had a swimming pool.

We dropped our bags off and went for a walk; all of about 20 metres. The music we could hear from our room turned out to be from the Utopia bar across the street, which was having a Full Moon Party . We decided to stay there for a couple of hours. The music was tops but there was some huge bodybuilder type who was constantly whistling over all of the tunes. He loved himself a bit too, especially as he turned up with a bandana on his head and just a towel round his waist. This sole item of clothing was confirmed when he decided to climb up to the supporting roof beams about 10 feet above us. He had nothing under the towel but a few of the girls seemed to be pleased. Let's just say that it wasn't that impressive.......perhaps the towel was very cold !!!!

The following morning we headed for the beach. We were pretty close to Serendipity Beach which has a reasonably good write up......God knows why. It was strewn with seaweed, bottles, papers and a syringe!!! There are a number of beaches at Sihanoukville so during our time there, we decided to take a mammoth walk from Serendipity Beach across Ochheuteal Beach and then onto Otres Beach. The story was much the same for each. There was litter across the full 5km beach walk. At many points along the walk there were large metal and concrete tubes coming from the mainland depositing water into the sea. We were slightly concerned that it was sewage but where reassured by one of the locals that this was just rain water from the mountains.

On one of the days we relaxed on Serendipity Beach and decided to grab a drink from one of the bars and use their sun-loungers (only the bars seemed to have sun-loungers to sit on). As we were having a drink a couple of young Cambodian women stopped by and asked whether we wanted massages. Lisa said yes to a leg massage and was shortly talked into a full leg threading along with an eyebrow threading. Threading is done by wrapping cotton string around the hand and fingers and is then used to pull out hair from the root. We felt sorry for the young girl who did this as it took her 2 hours pulling out Lisa's leg hair that, to be honest, were barely visible. It was all good but was rather painful around the ankle! Mark didn't fare much better as he also found himself agreeing to a leg massage and then had a foot treatment where he had lemon juice put onto his nails. What this was supposed to do I don't know!!! We did ask but the response was lost in translation.

After handing over nearly US$40 for treatments, half of which we didn't need, we then found ourselves bartering for a headband for Lisa, which quickly turned into three headbands!! Next, Mark bought a bookmark. We must have "mugs" tattooed on our foreheads as we appeared to be the only people that were buying from the beach vendors. Mark did however draw the line at the lobsters that were being carried around in the hot sun. Thankfully, the sun did come out but this was soon replaced by a fair bit of rain each day. It was the rainy season so it was to be expected.

On a more positive note, we got a tuk-tuk to another beach called Victory Beach on one of the days. This was the best beach we visited and almost deserted except for a few women selling goods and asking whether we wanted a manicure or massage (oh no not again!!!). Right next to the beach was a Russian owned bar called The Airport, which housed a Antomov 24 prop plane in the middle of the bar. This plane use to be in service between Siem Reap and Battambang (both in Cambodia). Thankfully it no longer flies. It was interesting to look inside though. Also, the bar housed a BMW that had been cut into two pieces lengthways and the cabin from a lorry. It sounds odd but it was well put together. The bar was empty during the day and a bar come club of a night. We stayed on Victory beach for about 3 hours. Whilst relaxing there, a few dogs came over near Lisa's sun lounger despite there being long stretches with no one sitting there. Unfortunately one of them decided to do a wee on the sand and then flick it over Lisa. She was not amused. Thank God it didn't do a poo!

There wasn't much to see at the resort so we spent most of our time walking around, sunbathing, eating and drinking. In the case of the latter two, we found a good restaurant called Mick & Craig's which was doing a US$5 Indian starter + main meal menu. After finishing the food we shot a few games of pool and were about to leave when Geoff and Sophie turned up looking for a room. What a small world. We had met them in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand and travelled with them on the crossing between Thailand and Laos. They went on to Vang Vieng when we took a detour to Phonsavan. They had just arrived in North Vietnam when a typhoon hit so decided to move on to get some sun in our resort. Unfortunately, when they arrived they were met by torrential rain, thunder and lightning!!! That evening, we had a drink with them in a busy bar called Monkey Republic, a few doors down from our resort.

Our time in Sihanoukville flew by and we were soon on the bus again. This time we were going to Kep, which was a main beach resort before the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese had a huge shoot-out in the town leaving the place largely deserted with burnt out and crumbling buildings. We decided to book into a jungle resort called Jasmine Valley (www.jasminevalley.com) and use this as the base to also explore the neighbouring town of Kampot. This town is famous for its pepper plantations.

That's all for now. Lisa & Mark :-)