Koh Kong + Sihanoukville

First of all, this photo is at the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, i don tknow if it goet put up before or not. Im putting it up there because any of us who know jamie stuart will laugh at this photo which he is in. 3 times. As if once wasnt enough.

sorry for the long wait, i know its been a while. But I am here now so no worries.

We are currently in Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon, and departing tommorrow for a tour down the Mekong Delta for three days. Anyway so we are up to Koh Kong. Im going to compress everything a bit sorry because we are quite behind. Koh Kong is on the southern coast of Cambodia. Its a tiny little port town right on the border. It used to be famous for drug and people trafficing but now its becoming more of a resort and eco tourism destination because of the beaches and beautiful mangrove national park forests.we rented bikes and went out to the mangrove forest walk, which as you can see was really beautiful. We managed to get hold of some ice block sticks like you used to get from dairies in NZ to battle the heat, and there were no accidents on the bikes either! Even Jarryd came out of the bumpy dirt roads unscathed. We then biked out of town to the main waterfall in Koh Krong province. We went for a swin there, although it was pretty hairy getting accross the slippery rocks. After not hurting himself on the bikes all day, jarryd feel and hammered his leg crossing the river, and the second photo is of jamie collecting his shoes after he dropped them in the river after slipping. We nearly lost them down the waterfall but jamie managed to pull of a full on rescue. We drove back into town to the big resort, were told that to use the massive pool there would cost 8usd each and though F that we'll just go to the beach instead. Despite it being sunset time the water was warm, and the sunset wasnt bad either.The next day we had booked a full day tour out to Koh Kong Island, but woke up at 6 30am to find that it was pissing down with rain, so we just chilled around town, updated the blog, then moved onto Sihanoukville.

Sihanoukville is pretty easy to sum up really. Beach during the day, party at night. Thats what Sihanoukvilles about. So far its escaped development, although this is changing, in town we learned that the Russian Mafia owns half of the land in Sihanouk, and the Chinese own the other half, amd they both have big resort plans for the place. But for now it is backpacker central. Ill give you an overview. White sand beaches during the day, just sit on beach chairs with a beer and relax slash recouperate from last nights hangover. At night you chase the happy hour with all the other backpackers, meet loads of people from scandanavia and australia, and party. 10c beers were the best value we managed to find, but if beer isnt your thing you can easily get 1 dollar red bull vodkas, and 2 dollar buckets (as in a bucket filled with a HUGE glass of whiskey and half a litre or so of coke). That plus the free shots you get on arrival at some places made for some hard but enjoyable nights.

The picture above is where we stayed in Sihanouk. Monkey Republic. 3USD a night each and about 2min from the beachfront.

We went on a boat tour one day to mix things up. It took us out to Bamboo island and around on a massive 3 story launch. We were allowed to jump off the top platform, 8m high, which was awesome, that is untill I attempted the front flip, which I did succed in completing but kind of bellyflopped in the process. Nice.

We also went out to a different beach, Victory beah on the other side of Sihanouk from backpacker central, and made a new friend out there, pictured above.

So thats pretty much an overview of Koh Kong and Sihanoukville. Ive missed out a lot but in the interest of wanting to go to china town for dinner i'll leave it there.

JB