So we said our goodbyes to our friends in Bangkok and started to make our way to Cambodia. Luckily we had done some research the day before and discovered it would be quite a journey so we decided to break the trip up. We first got a bus to Trat which took about 6 hours. We found a nice cheap hotel and arranged a bus to take us to the boarder the following morning. There really isn't anything in Trat, it's just a pit stop for people going to Koh Chang or Cambodia like us. We were up early and jumped on the mini bus with other people from our hotel. It was only an hour drive so not too bad. We arrived at the border expecting queues and a lot of hassle from people offering to sort your visas out. We ignored them and went straight through and went to the official office. Upon approaching we were told that we had to go through "quarantine". This was basically two guys sitting behind a wooden desk in plain clothing with a plastic sheet above it saying quarantine. Hearing about how corrupt Cambodia was we new this was not a needed but we decide to play along, we had to pay 20bt (45p) to have our temperature tested... Kate had to hold herself back from laughing. The way they then took our temperature was by flashing something in our faces, as you can imagine this then set Kate over the edge and she couldn't stop laughing. So that was "quarantine" done, luckily we both passed!

Next we had to go to another window and fill out a form, hand our passport over with our money. The visa should have cost $20 but they refuse dollars and say you have to pay in baht but its 1200bt, nearly double the amount, and you guessed it, they just pocket the difference. We had heard that some people have managed to pay in dollars, but a guy we were travelling with said last time he crossed the border he said he only had dollars with him, basically they kept him in the room for an hour and in the end ended up paying in baht. So after hearing this we didn't really want the hassle so we just paid in baht.
Once our visas were printed we then had to have our photo taken along with finger prints and complete another form. Once this was all done we then sat with the rest of our group for 2 hours waiting for our bus. Our bus turned out to be a mini bus which was very naughty of the bus company. Unfortunately the driver didn't want to go until the bus was full so we ended up waiting a bit longer. There wasn't any room for our backpacks (everyone had one!) so it was a tight fit. There were four people squished onto the back seat which can only really seat three people. We were the unlucky ones on the back seat! Kate was sitting above the wheel so her knees were tucked to her chest and Pete could only just get his legs in. The van had no air con and we were on this bus for 5 hours! The most uncomfortable journey yet!!! We finally arrived in Sihanoukville and found our hotel. That night there was a full moon party down the beach so we decided to go and check it out, cheap drinks and ok music - we had a good night!

The following day, needing something to sort our hangovers out we found an English restaurant and splurged out on a full English, OMG it was the best thing ever, English sausages and bacon and to top it off they had HP sauce! After stuffing our faces we headed to the beach. The closet beaches were serendipity which was tiny or ochheuteal beach which was horrific. Sunbeds covered the beach and all squished together, very loud music pumping from every bar and rubbish everywhere. We didn't bother in the end and decided to jump in a tuk tuk and go to Otres beach a bit further down the coast. We heard from mates that came a couple of years ago that it was really nice. Well.... it was better than the other but not the best beach we'd been too. But it was cleaner, quieter and the sun beds were a bit more spread out. For the rest of our time here we just came to this beach.

It was New Year's Eve and we decided to head to the beach, and did a little crawl of the bars. The beach was packed the atmosphere was amazing! At midnight everyone was letting off fireworks along the shore, it was an incredible sight, definitely a NYE we won't forget. The rest of the night is a bit of a blur, we bumped into people we had met earlier in the night and on the minibus, good night from what we can remember, the Cambodians sure know how to party, they're bloody mental!
In true Jeffs style Kate was bed bound for the day, it was so hot in our room so we splashed out and got air conditioning. The rest of the day was spent watching tv feeling sorry for ourselves and planning what to do next.

We changed our original plan and decided we wanted a bit more beach action so we booked a boat to Koh Rong.