Day 32, according to Lauren

  
We woke up in plenty of time to get ready before our bus was due to pick us up to take us to Sihanoukville. We packed up our things and prepared to go downstairs at 9.45, the time the lady had written on our ticket. At 9.25 Sarah was barely dressed and I was still faffing when our room phone rang. I answered it and the lady informed me that our pickup was here now. Assuming that we’d have a bus full of other tourists waiting on us, we hurriedly packed the last of our things away and headed down. As it turned out the minibus was empty and the driver looked rather chilled so we could have taken our time. Anyway, he loaded our bags on and then we stepped into what we had expected to be a plush VIP experience as the lady had promised. It was a van with two benches in the back and no air con…

 
We were hugely unimpressed and started to wonder how we were going to spend 4 hours in this thing. I was on the verge of tears when we turned the corner and pulled up at the travel offices, where there was a lovely looking minibus waiting for us. Phew! We transferred our bags and ourselves and got in. It was indeed pretty plush – leather reclining seats, good air con, lots of leg room etc. This was more like it. We breathed a sigh of relief and settled down for the journey. Around 45 minutes in, the traffic began to slow and eventually came to a complete stop. We assumed this would clear relatively quickly but after moving approximately 10m in an hour, hope had faded. Some people got out to go to the bathroom and get snacks from the shops just off the side of the road and we hadn’t moved more than an inch by the time they returned. After another half an hour or so I checked google maps for our location and it said three and a half hours to Sihanoukville. The four hour journey time was definitely a long lost hope. With a lack of much else to do I checked if there was any free wifi coming from the shops nearby. VIP1 showed up on my phone and Sarah said she had seen something about wifi on the side of the minibus. I decided to try and guess the password to pass the time, thinking it would take up a good half hour and I would probably have to give up eventually. I tried some combinations of the travel company’s name which didn’t work so then moved onto generic passwords. I typed in 12345678 and to my surprise it was correct. My time wasting activity had lasted all of 15 minutes.

Finally after however many hours of crawling, the traffic got going and we were on our way. When the man in the seat in front of me reclined his seat back, this gave me a great view of the road up ahead. I was probably better off not looking at all as I spent the next half hour watching our driver overtake into oncoming traffic and dodge stray cattle in the road, all with a surprising lack of mirror usage (the horn seems preferable here). It was a little nail biting to say the least but soon we pulled over for a break at what they would call a service station – what we would call an open air kitchen with holes in the ground (toilets – needless to say we did not brave them and put ourselves on a drinking ban for the rest of the journey so we wouldn’t have to pee). Everyone got a meal of some kind of rice and meat and soup. We politely declined and opted for some fresh pineapple (prepared by a 10 year old Cambodian girl) to keep us going. Obviously we had the snack pack on board so we weren’t too worried about going hungry.

An hour and a half more of stomach clinching driving later, we pulled up at a petrol station. The door slid open and 5 locals peered their heads in and started at us. “Hello welcome to Cambodia” one of them muttered. We briefly and worriedly wondered if this was where we were supposed to disembark but it soon turned out that we were just dropping off one person here. We continued on and after a few more drop offs arrived at Sihanoukville bus station. This was basically a scrap yard with an office on the side. We got off, stretched our legs and went to find our bags. We were of course greeted by the unmistakable “hello madam tuk tuk please where you go” of countless tuk tuk drivers and decided we should figure out where our hotel was before agreeing a price. I got out my phone and Google showed it to be a 6 minute walk away. Amazing! We explained to the tuk tuk drivers that we were walking as it was so close but one of them repeatedly try to persuade us to get a lift with him. Bizarrely walking seems unheard of here, even if your destination is literally a 5 minute walk away. After some firm no thankyous, he finally backed off and angrily muttered something in Khmer under his breath. We hoiked our backpacks on and set off to find the hotel. We went down a side road and Sarah spotted it right opposite a ‘seven day supermarket’. We went in and were shown to our room. A lovely big bed, air con, nice bathroom, dressers, a fridge and a tv. Perfect. 

 

 
It was now 5pm – the supposed 4 hour journey had taken a grand total of 7 hours. We had been warned about this kind of thing in Thailand – things here are done on Asian time and schedules are more like rough guides/suggestions. Our little bellies were rumbling as we hadn’t eaten properly all day, so we went down and perused the menu of the bar/restaurant downstairs. It was part owned by a Swedish guy so they had traditional Swedish dishes as well as Khmer food and some Western options. Sarah had seen that ‘LokLak’ was a traditional Khmer dish so we thought we’d be brave and go for that. We had some veggie spring rolls to start and ordered a couple of cocktails with it. When the lady bought the drinks over she asked us to try them in front of her as it was her first time making them. We both sipped and politely praised her efforts, reassuring her how delicious they were, and when she was gone exchanged notes on how dodgy they were.

  
The restaurant happened to have a large bookshelf covering one wall and we had spotted lonely planet Cambodia, so each grabbed a copy to read while waiting for dinner. I leafed through to the Sihanoukville chapter which was oddly loose and in French (the rest was English). Helpful. We read up on the rest of the Cambodian south coast until our food came. It was presented with flowers carved from carrots and looked interesting. The LokLak was a beef stew type thing with a fried egg on top, served with rice. We divvied up and tucked in. It was delicious and gratefully received by our empty stomachs. Sarah had spotted some apple pie on the menu and so just had to order that, craving home comforts after a long day. I got jealous so ordered some ice cream. The pie turned out to be more like crumble but it was still delicious and really hit the spot. After this we headed back up to the room, feeling oddly knackered even though we hadn’t exactly exerted ourselves during the day. We changed into our PJs settled into bed. It was still a little early so we thought we’d check out what was on Cambodian TV. They appeared to have full cable channels including fox movies, which happened to be showing a film I had wanted to see when it came out, Hot Persuit. We lost all respect for Reece Witherspoon due to her shocking performance, but a it was funny film all the same. We brushed our teeth and got our heads down. Next thing I knew it was 3am and I was dashing to the bathroom to throw up. And again at 6am. Uh oh.