Sihanoukville

3/26/12:

We're still in recovery mode so we took it slow and easy today. Walked around the town and checked out the beach. The descriptions we read about this place are pretty spot on: seedy, dirty, grungy, etc. but it isn't that bad really. It's clearly in need of tourism to kick start some infrastructure development and maybe a facelift or two but that's all. Our map showed some bars on the beach and labeled the west end ones 'tourist bars' and the east end ones 'Khmer bars', Khmers being the ethnic majority in Cambodia. Sounded kinda funny until we got to the beach and saw that the map was on the money.

The tourist bars had plush chairs and lounge chairs and beach chairs all laid out. The Khmer bars all had 80's style beach chairs surrounding large communal tables. The tourist bars had old fat western men cavorting with their Cambodian trophy ladies. The Khmer bars had families here on vacation with cases of there own beer. Big difference.

Anyway, nothing exciting happening today. But tomorrow we're heading to the island of Koh Rong for 4 days. This place has electricity for about 2 hours a day which means no A/C, no fan, no hot water, no tv and certainly no Internet. So we'll be off the grid for a bit. Don't worry of you don't hear from us for a few days. We'll post as soon as we get back.

Oh, one more thing. It rained tonight. Like the end of the world type rain. Something we definitely miss about living on the east coast. It just doesn't rain nearly enough (or hard enough) in SD.