Peaceful

Oh hey, look at that! I have a blog! I just realized today that it's been a few days since I posted anything, but things have been pretty quiet.

After Phnom Penh, was Kampot for two nights. The first night I spent at a guesthouse called Long Villa. The guesthouse was fine until it was time to check out. They tried saying that I hadn't paid for my meal the day before and I know that I did. I could have argued the point over principle, but decided that for $2.10 it just wasn't worth it. The sucky thing is that I found out just today that Rhian and Marina had had the same exact problem (coincidentally, they stayed at the same guesthouse a couple of days earlier than me). My second night in Kampot I had a CS host. Tony is American but has been traveling for the last year or so, and has been living in Cambodia for the last couple of months. Tony was more than happy to accommodate my feelings of laziness, so we didn't do much more than hang out. I got to meet a number of his friends, we shared a couple of meals together, and talked about our travels, but that's about it.

Yesterday, as I was sitting on the mini-bus waiting for it to leave for Sihanoukville, I ran into Rouven. We happened to be on the same bus, so shooting the breeze with him was a pleasant way to spend the hour and a half trip. We decided when we arrived that we would split costs and share a room. It's SO much cheaper to travel in a pair or triple than as a single. As an example, a room for a single might be $10, but the double room is only $11 (meaning $5.50 each as opposed to $10). That might not seem like a very big difference to you, but if your daily budget is $20, every dollar counts. Anyway, we're staying at a place called Sen Penh Chet Guesthouse for $4 each and it literally takes about 30 seconds to get to the beach.


For the rest of the day yesterday and all day today, the scene kinda looked like this: find a lounge chair and umbrella or a big, comfy, cushy chair, order a fruit shake, "no, I'm not interested in buying a bracelet," read, order iced coffee with sweet milk, "no, I don't want a massage," read, listen to iPod, chat a bit, order a fruit shake, "no, I don't have any money to give you," read. Lather, rinse, and repeat about 87 times and that was my day today. Although the touts on the beach are a bit annoying, the girls are actually pretty sweet. Their English is really good and they always ask the same questions: 1) Where you from?, 2) What's your name, and 3) You have boyfriend/girlfriend? Poor Rouven, though. As a 20 year old kid, he's probably mortified that anyone would think this old lady is his girlfriend! We did manage to pull ourselves off the beach for dinner. . .but then we went back for an after dinner coffee. :-) The ambiance is just nice and the breeze coming off the water (the Gulf of Thailand, btw) is cool and relaxing. Oh! The other interesting thing that happened today? Remember Adam? Yeah, I randomly ran into him today at the beach. This keeps happening to me and I can't decide if it's cool or creepy.

Tomorrow we're moving from Serendipity Beach in Sihanoukville to Otres Beach. Otres is supposed to be quieter, with not as many backpackers, and an even more laid back atmosphere. Considering that I have days of temples (including Angkor Wat!) ahead of me, I think a few more days of beach time will suit me just fine.