October 16th - Kampot to Sihanoukville

Our first month away from home and it already seems much longer, but has passed really quickly. We took no chances this time and took a mini bus to Sihanoukville to chill out on the coast for a few days after our pretty hectic stay in Cambodia so far.

It took us about 2 hours once again in torrential showers and once again with a mental driver. This one put on a DVD which had a monitor at the top of the windscreen and proceeded to watch it intermittently while he was driving.

We arrived at Serendipity Beach in the pouring rain so chucked on our rucksack covers and waterproofs and made a break for our accommodation. None of the helpful owners of other guest houses would tell us where it was, but we eventually found it after risking life and limb scrambling over rocks for a short 5 minutes down at the shoreline. We're staying at Cloud 9 beach bungalows and it's certainly a step up or 5 from where we were. Very clean, quiet, private and with a great sea view where you can hear the waves from the balcony.

We chilled out for the rest of the day by the sea and went for a walk along the coast. We timed it badly and got soaked in a short, sharp downpour, but we managed to get our clothes dry using our trusty portable washing line (thanks again Mike and Suzi!). Further up the beach is more touristy and busy so looks like we got a plumb location.

On the way out to dinner I thought I'd found a pretty big mouse poo in the bathroom. On shining my torch directly above the 'landing site' we saw what appeared to be the world's biggest gecko in the dark rafters of the bungalow, looking pretty pleased with itself. It wasn't there when we got back so we assumed he'd run off into the night... although Sarah found renewed evidence of him the following day.

Finally, today we've had some sunshine and so far no rain! Spent the morning sunning myself like a gecko on the rocks - Paul sat under an umbrella. Having spent the previous night listening to the torrential downpour intermittently in our bungalow and cursing why we'd decided to go this way round SE Asia and hit the coast during rainy season, today was a god send, especially as there's not a lot to do in Sihanoukville apart from laze in the sun - or visit the islands, but boats aren't going in the stormy seas at the moment...

Soooooo relaxed... was the first proper day of sunshine yesterday, so spent the day soaking up some rays, got my eyebrows threaded and toenails painted pink by one of the beach women.

Beach was pretty rammed further along with loads of westerners also catching a few rays before the next onslaught of rain - and we saw some pretty bad cases of sunburn - ouch... Today was pretty much a wash out - but our resident big fat gecko which has been using our room as its lavatory was back in residence, and we also have a couple of toads who don't take no (or being dropped over the balcony) as an answer and keep popping back in to say hello on the mat outside our bathroom.

Last night on Cloud 9, before we head off to Thailand tomorrow. Fingers crossed the weather improves again...

We've decided to slightly reduce our time in Cambodia to give ourselves more time in Laos, as the journey down south looks like it's going to take some time, and we don't want to spend literally 4 days in a bus, so we've got one more day here, and then it's off to Thailand on Tuesday - can't wait! Now all we need to do is get the memory cards sorted - looks like it is a virus, which is a right pain in the derriere - similar to my 5 mosquito bites from earlier today...!