Back to the beach

Four days of touring temples is exhausting, especially when it's 35 degrees and humid as hell. With no swimming pool or other solution to cool down around, we started dreaming about white beaches again. This meant spending an entire day in the bus, going down south, but it would be one of our last bus trips in Asia, so it wouldn't hurt too much. Sihanoukville, the beach town we had chosen, was slightly disappointing; not very charming and its main beach was awful, full of rubbish, empty beer cans and rats. We had to make quite an effort in finding a nice place for our swimming and sunbathing.

Just in front of the Cambodian coast, there are plenty of small islands with pristine beaches and visiting them is the right thing to do when you're staying in Sihanoukville. 

One of the things I love about Asia, besides the culture and the food, is the possibility of being pampered for no money. Getting a massage seems as important as brushing your teeth and you'll easily have a one hour body massage for eight dollar or less. On the beach, dozens of women offer to take care of your hands and feet and in Cambodia, I had it all done for 4 dollar. Even Benoit had his feet cleaned for two dollar, even though he didn't enjoy this as much as I did, haha...

Okay, it's not all joy and happiness in Asia. People try to scam you all the time, intending to bring you to places you don't want to see or sell you things you don't want to buy. You have to bargain almost everything, in some places even food! There is also a lot of poverty, especially here in Cambodia and you'll often feel bad and uncomfortable about it, especially when kids are involved. Around Siem Reap, a little girl came to me and tried to sell me some postcards. She definitely wasn't older than four and when she asked me where I was from, she started counting till ten in fluent Dutch and French. Later, I heard her doing the same in German, Italian and Spanish. Even though  this kid really impressed us, we felt sad for her as well, as it was obvious someone had been training her hard to make her sell those cards. To ease our conscience, we're trying to eat in 'good cause' restaurants (restaurants where street or poor kids are being trained to become chef or waiter) and we're buying our souvenirs in charity shops.

(This is the last post on Cambodia. We have spent some days in its capital, Phnom Penh, from where we visited the 'Killing Fields' but we have no pictures of that - it just felt very inappropriate to use our camera there)