Today was a day earmarked, for some time previously, as a lazy day.
We’d read the itinerary and so we knew when we got in the plane to Bangkok that we’d be off to the beach in Cambodia when we got to Sihanoukville. And we knew when we saw the detailed itinerary in Phnom Penh at the start of the trip that we’d only have one full day to ourselves in Sihanoukville.
And this, I proclaim, this was that day. And we spent most of it sitting at the hotel restaurant or getting a really good look at the pool. And we washed some clothes and hung them up in the window because we are classy backpackers.
Also my foot had really started to hurt even more than last night, but I could still move my toes, so while I didn’t know what I could have damaged so badly I knew nothing was broken. And that would have to do.
We didn’t rush out of bed, on this our day of not getting up at 6.30 or 7am to get in a bus to go somewhere, but we didn’t really have an epic sleep-in either. But we were still finishing breakfast and making use of the wireless internet in the restaurant area when breakfast ceased to be served at 10.30. Then the laptop battery unexpectedly died (again). It’s ben developing a disturbing habit of doing this and I’m wondering whether it just needs some good old-fashioned 240v AC, or whether the internet rumours are true and some laptop batteries just don’t make it far past 300 cycles.
Anyway… it’s good to have the computer die without warning halfway through something, especially when something is putting up pictures on your website so that everyone knows you’re still alive even though you’re getting a bit behind in the travel journals, which you definitely intend to finish off as soon as you don’t have to pack and repack your bag every other day.
So then came the sink-washing, which is always an amusing thing to do, even more so when it’s a tiny sink and the plug isn’t the tightest you’ve seen, and your clothes end up getting not much more than a rinse, and frankly are starting to get a bit greasy. Readers might guess at this time that we were starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel in that we would soon actually be able to unpack our bags and not need to pack them again for quite some time. And oddly enough, that’s when it started to grate the most. While it was just reality, i.e., in September when we had months of travelling left and I was in St. Petersburg and quite happy just to have my backpack in one piece, thank you very much, packing and unpacking and moving was just a thing we had to do.
But there’s no time to worry about those kinds of things when you have to squeeze a mid-morning nap and a solid application of moisturiser on your horrific beetroot snorkel burn into your busy schedule.
And before you know it it’s lunchtime and you have to go back down to the restaurant and find a nice table to lounge around at and have fried rice and vegetables for lunch; net cost: $3USD.
Then the afternoon really starts to get away and you’ve got to go and get your washing down and sort it and fold it and shoehorn it all back into your backpack ahead of a bus trip tomorrow, and then hit the pool. What with the sunburn and all, I wore my white rash vest thingy, which was getting more or less the only usage during our late Sihanoukville period that it had in the whole 4 month trip. Yep, that was worth carrying around. I didn’t know, though, whether or not we would end up taking the Malarone which would have given us some photosensitivity.
After a reasonable dip I retired to the deck chairs to count Alice up through the 50 laps she wanted to swim, but ’25 to go’ sounded like too many, so I cut it down to how many prime numbers were left between now and 50. 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47… anyway I thought it was funny. That made it 5.30pm and time to start vaguely contemplating getting together for dinner with the group to celebrate what a great trip we had. Some people had decided they weren’t going back to Phnom Penh, or didn’t need to to get where they were going next, and therefore they’d much rather go and find a little beach hut they could rent for a couple of days and remain as close to the beach as possible.
Nak took us to a restaurant literally ON the beach, and we sat in some of those cane cradle-chairs and ordered cocktails, and Kiel and Jamie dared other into getting jugs of cocktails, while Mike and Helen got stuck into some jugs of cocktails with little prompting required. The breeze made it a somewhat tolerable temperature and everyone did start to wish that they were going to be staying here on the beach as well. There was no moon tonight so someone had the bright idea of hosting a Black Moon party, for which we had to walk a little way down the beach to a bar which might have been a lot of fun if there were more people there, but as it was it just noisy and covered. Preferring to sit actually on the beach, we left the group there and took ourselves back towards the hotel, lounged into some cane cradle-chairs at another bar, and had us some more cocktails.
And I can assure you, based on our extensive research, that there is just about nothing better than laying on comfy chairs right next to the water, sea breeze refreshing you, with cocktails, on a warm tropical night.
Around about an hour later, as we were just about to pull up stumps, the rest of our group came rolling back past, significantly merrier, heading for another bar down the other end of the beach. It did occur to us to wonder how many would be awake for the 7.30 bus ride back to Phnom Penh tomorrow morning.
Oh and also we were so busy being relaxed today that we didn’t end up taking any photos. Sorry.
Greg