Me want Bamboo

Saturday 11th December

We are now about to head out from Sihanoukville and for anyone bored enough to still be reading this, I cannot recommend it enough.

We were initially concerned about entering Cambodia but it has been by far our greatest experience to date offering everything that you could possibly want for a holiday destination.

We spent a few days in Sihanoukville itself that has long winding sandy beaches full of sun loungers and restaurants.

It is chock full of touts hawking a wide variety of tat from fake sun glasses and bracelets through to in place massages.

On the day that we arrived I was casually sitting on my lounger when one of the later touts decided it would be great fun to introduce me to the wonderful world of threading.

Threading (or "sadistic unrelentant pain" as it should be called) is a process whereby two pieces of string are twisted between the fingers of the torturer and then rubbed up and down various parts of your anatomy, ripping out hairs from their folicles as they go.

My particular tout went by the name of Annie and took great pleasure in listening to my whelps of agony as she proudly tour apart my back, thus insuring no life will ever grow there again.

For the first time ever I started to appreciate the high tolerance that women have for pain in the line of beauty as Pauline sat there for 2 hours getting her legs done without flinching once.

Once the pain had subsided (or the alcohol started to kick in) we made our way down the beach with my shiny new back back blinding all onloookers, to a section that housed giant inflatables.

That was the last time we saw Tyler that day, the things were swamped with kids and he had a whale of a time risking death or injury by throwing himself off of giant slides and trampolines.

The next day we headed off to Bamboo island, a fantastic little tropical paradise about an hours boat ride from the mainland.

We had been advised to go here by a few travellers that we had met in Vietnam as the island itself has just been brought by a large American company and will shortly be closing its doors to backpackers forever.

This already sounded like a nightmare but once we stepped foot on the island we realised that it was far more than this.

What the residents had built up there was something special, with a natural ambience that many have tried to recreate all over the world but have fallen far short.

Everyone we ran into were relaxed to the point of unconciousness and at $15 a night for a bungalow many people were staying here for the long run.

The island had about 10 bungalows, a dorm and a bar, other than that you were left to your own devices to go off exploring, snorkel in the crystal clear waters or just veg.

The majority of the tourists seemed to have opted for the last option and we soon found ourselves at the bar for long swaiths of time just enjoying the chilled out music and cheap beer.

The bungalows were situated right on the sea front and although it should have been relaxing to hear the waves crashing all night it was so loud that it woke us up on several occasions.

When we were packing up I spotted the biggest spider that I have ever seen in my life just behind tylers bed, the thing was the size of my fist and I jumped out of my skin, when we mentioned it to the locals they simply said, "yeah you dont want to get bitten by one of them" which was reassuring.

In a little over three weeks the bull dozers are going to be moving in and whilst I am sure that the ultimate result will be something special it could never recreate its predecessor, not that I will ever find out because it will be out of our price range.

We are now headed to Kep just down the coast with nowhere to stay and no idea where the hell we are going after that!