We left the heat and sunshine of Phnom Penh and boarded the bus for a relatively short 5 hour trip to Sihanoukville. Unfortunately we lost the sunshine on the way but kept the heat and humidity! So we arrived at Cambodia's supposedly beach capital with the wet season in full swing!
Even worse was to come as I got off the bus feeling quite ill (it was to get worse) and we headed to our beach front hotel - in the rain.
Once we checked in I went for a little lie down only to wake up feeling horribly ill.
Apparently during the night I was hallucinating and not very well but luckily I don't remember it.
So needless to say I spent the next few days in bed with food poisoning (we narrowed it down to frozen yoghurt I ate as a birthday treat in Phnom Penh) and didn't see a great deal of Sihanoukville - so i'll let Leanne's photos paint you a picture. The one thing I can say is that it seems to be a place for a lot of old western men to have a Cambodian girlfriend for a few days while they renew their visas for Thailand and Vietnam.
Once I was on the mend we decided to move onto our next destination Kampot which is a river town and a gateway to out lying islands in the gulf of Thailand and was also a favourite retreat for the French and there is now an abandoned hill side colonial town up in the hills behind Kampot.
So we paid US$7 each for a seat on a nice private mini bus which turned out to be a lie and there was 12 seats for 23 people! but luckily we scored a seat each and the trip was only 2 and a half hours.
Kampot was a refreshing change from Sihanoukville - there is a large ex pat community here as the town has a nice river front and there are a lot of nice cafes, bar and restaurants to enjoy watching the sunset with a drink or two.
I do have to add that there are a lot of dogs in Kampot (luckily not for eating) but their owners put them out when the sun goes down to defend their property so they end up in large packs walking the streets, but we never had any problems with them.
We rented bikes for free from our amazing guest house 'Mea Culpa' and set about riding around the town and river front but these bikes where far from mountain bikes or even a BMX bike - and the roads are not kind on your behind! Add this to the heat and me recovering from food poisoning and being scared of being more than 15 feet from the nearest toilet! - now you know how nervous I was cycling around the town.
We realised the weather was against us and we would not be able to get over to any of the islands due to rough seas so we decided to head up north to try and spot some Irrawaddy Dolphins.
So next stop Kratie.
To see our pictures from Sihanoukville and Kampot please click on the link below;
https://picasaweb.google.com/112941139607408893724/SihanoukvilleAndKampotCambodia7thTo12thAugust2011#
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