Recently, we took a trip down to Sihanoukville, the beach resort of Cambodia. When I say recently, I’m referring more to about a month ago. But time is passing very quickly here. It only seems like yesterday we were being savaged by bird flu carrying rabid chickens. What’s a bit of rabies between friends. Anyway, we toddled off down to Sihanoukville by luxury bus. It was quite a pricey trip at $6 a ticket, but they gave us a cold chicken and mayo sandwich, a little cake and a bottle of icey water, so that was ok. Of course, I didn’t eat the sandwich. I don’t care if they are a 
luxury bus company, eating cold meat and mayo in a pre-packaged meal is almost applying in triplicate for a virulent case of salmonella. The trip was lovely, the hostess was friendly and could speak her scripted lines in English in a mostly decipherable accent. Despite a quick stop to offer sacrifices to pagan patron saints on behalf of our bus, we found ourselves in a cloudy but still reasonably beachy Sihanoukville. Arriving at the bus station we were confronted by a ravenous horde of moto drivers, Tuktuk drivers and hotel owners all pleading/encouraging us to take advantage of their services. Being ‘locals’ we decided that we had no need of their no-doubt overpriced and unnecessary trades, so we set off on foot, stopping via a tourist booth to get the low down on what we could do in the town. A small walk under a misconception involving the reading of the map and the interpretation of its scale finally convinced us that we would not walk the 4 kilometres to the beach with our luggage. So swallowing our pride we obtained the services of one of the over eager tuttuk drivers and zoomed down to the surprisingly desolate beachfront. Now that we were getting into the rainy season meant that there weren’t quite so many tourists seeking the sun and sand. We booked into a nearby hotel, ate an overpriced lunch and were on our way to a great holiday.
The most interesting part of our trip was the visit to the national park. We had been debating whether we should take the USD $15 trip to the national park or go on the snorkelling boat trip out to the Islands. The absolutely ‘bucketing’ rainfall the following morning put us in danger of cancelling the whole deal. It was looking more and more like we’d spend the weekend in the beach huts 300 meters away from the beach. At the last minute, the group (Miriam, myself, Toby, James, Miranda, Steve and Jan) decided to brave the torrential downpour (it wasn’t raining at the park apparently J ) and take the boat trip to the National park.Our ‘boat’ turned out to be a cross between a dinghy and a canoe with a small tarp suspended above the main part of the vessel. Being a very wet day, we all knew we were in for soppy pants.
Little did we know that our soppy pants would come from the boat getting beached on a sandbar and us having to wade into the Island shore. Fortunately, it was a beautiful scene and the water was warm. Sadly, my pants didn’t roll up far enough and I was wet at the bottom. I had put on a plastic bag to keep the rain off and after a long walk through the rainforest to a secluded beach, I was hot enough to be wet on the top. I took the plastic bag off just in time to catch it from an incoming cloud, so all in all, it was a very wet experience. The rain meant that we couldn’t see the 
dolphins, but it was still a great experience and a warm shower and coffee waited at the end to wrap up a very enjoyable day. 
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