Sihanoukville - "Add Happy - $2"

---

Sihanoukville would be the point for R&R during the 13 day trip. It's a beach town that has rapidally grown in size because of backpackers. The entire beach front is full of beach front bars extending as far as the eye can see. They all offer cheap food, $.50 beers and loads of beach vendors. These vendors aren't only selling things, but they'll give massages, manicures and even pluck hair. They women all went for the mens necks and womens legs and made you feel self conscious about a little hair, very good tactics. The bars were basically open all night. They'd close when you decided to left. A few people in our group stayed out until 5am and the owners were trying to get them to stay longer. Most food choices came with the option of "happy", aka, pot on your food. None of us ventured trying it, but I think it's self explanatory.

Besides laying on the beach, our group made a trip out to some islands off the coast where the snorkeling was decent. After a few quick dives, we sat on the beach all afternoon. You could pick up a bungalow on the island for only $10 a night with transport out and back. Very very cheap. When my parents describe the islands of Thailand 25 years ago, this sounds very similar. It seems in the near future it quickly get built up. As we were returning from the island, we could see a storm rolling in. I thought I saw big rain in Australia, but this took the cake. Some of the streets turned into small rivers dumping into the ocean. 5 seconds in the rain would give you the wet rat look.

The second full day there, I went to some waterfalls just outside town. It was a big local hangout and it was nice to get away from the hawkers and tourists. The water was very refreshing compared to the ocean which was about as warm as the air temps. Only 4 of us did this tour and the smaller group was nice as well. After we went to a hilltop temple which had quite a few monkies that we enticed down with bananas. Again the rain was approaching so we called it early and went home. We had a 7 hour drive on the public bus before we'd arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

More pictures to come once I get the right memory card.

---