About a year ago Lee and I came home from work and ran up to each
other shouting ‘have you seen Emma’s photos!’ a friend of ours had just
put up the most beautiful photos of an island called Koh Rong Samloem in
Cambodia. We decided that we had to check it out for ourselves.
As we started researching we realised that with the bus times and
boat times it was inevitable that we would have to spend one night in
Sihanoukville before catching the boat to Koh Rong Samloem. To begin
with we were both happy about this since we love seeing as many places
as possible. That was until I started researching the place. To say the
reviews were bad is an understatement. People seemed to hate this little
town. “oh well” we thought “how bad can it really be!” . The answer is
that the term ‘so-so’ has been invented for this little place.
We arrived mid-day and we were instantly harassed for about twenty
minutes while we walked to our hotel . People aggressively wanted us to
get into their trams/tuk tuk/taxis. When we eventually arrived at our
hotel we were pleasantly surprised. It looked really nice , despite
being quite cheap and having awful reviews (but still the best reviews
we could find).
It was at this point we discovered that we’d made an error with our
planning and we had to spend two days in Sihanoukville. I can’t say I
was happy but I was excited to make our own opinion of this little town.
We walked for a little bit and found a lovely restaurant on the road.
The people were nice , the food was cheap and the portions were
plentiful…but most importantly …the beer was cheap. We returned to our
hotel happy and upbeat for the next day. That’s when the hotel started
to show it’s true colors. We tried to open our door but it refused to
budge. We pushed a bit harder, both having individual ‘you must be doing
it wrong’ turns. That’s when we noticed the door had obviously been
kicked open a few times. Due to poor locks we basically had to break
into our own hotel room. Once we huffed and puffed our way in we sat on
the bed and I grabbed two glasses to pour ourselves a well deserved
class of diet coke….this is when the inside of the glass seemed to be
moving in front of my eyes. I refocused since I had had one beer at
dinner…inside the glass were a million ants. This is when we started to
look around the room and realise it was swarmed with them. The more our
eyes adjusted , the more we saw. We jumped up and ran to the reception
desk. The staff seem to clock off at a certain time so we were stuck in
the ant room. Lee cleared them up the best he could and I headed to the
bathroom. I wasn’t feeling great .
Not feeling great turned into my insides trying to escape…very
quickly and very aggressively. This , as everyone knows, is not the best
feeling when on holiday. But in Asia it seems inevitable. I let my body
attack and finally felt slightly human enough to leave the bathroom.
Being ill is an awful feeling and at that moment I didn’t think it could
get much worse…that was until I flushed the toilet. Watching the
toilet water starting to go up instead of down puts dread into a human
like nothing else. I won’t go into too much detail here in case you are
sitting down reading this with a lovely breakfast but to say ‘it was
the worst of times’ in that bathroom probably wouldn’t sum it up. Lee
and I have been together a long time but the things we’ve both had to
deal with on this trip has matured our relationship extremely
quickly…and luckily made us laugh a hell of a lot. Leaving that bathroom
to face Lee and explain the horrors that awaited behind the door was
not my favourite moment. Cleaning it up because I refused to let him
enter the bathroom was yet another of my least happy memories.
When the ants, toilet and door were all distant memories and we
settled down to sleep I was secretly dreading the next day and wishing
with all my might that we could just leave for our island paradise the
second the sun shone.
Sihanoukville – 1
Us – 0
(Luckily there are no photos to accompany this post !)
We took a seat in a comfy looking beach bar and were told by the
staff that they were on the break and wouldn’t be serving anyone for a
few hours. So we got up and headed as far as we could until children
stopped hassling us and arrived at ‘above us only sky’.
This bar was our little savior in the town. We loved it here. Nice
music, nice service and a great view. We sat here for about 3 hours
because we didn’t want to head into they main area again. We organised
our boat to Koh Rong Samloem in a local tourist building (as adviced by
our hotel) and headed back to our hotel. We had a nap and woke up in
time for dinner. We started to get ready to head out when Lee and I
caught each others eye…looked at our laptop containing all of our
unwatched Game of Thrones episodes…and ordered a pizza.
