Beach and Bus (Dec. 27, 28, 2014)

Dec. 27

Today I slept in a bit and then walked to Independence Beach for my last lazy beach day before going back to Phnom Penh to catch my flight to Vietnam. I met Rouven at the beach and we chatted, I drew, and we swam. Laure-Elie joined us later in the afternoon and told me all about the guy she met up with from Laos, and how wonderful everything was. It was really cute and I was happy for her. It was also sad, because we both knew that today would be our last day to hang out. She is going on to Thailand, and me to Vietnam.

I arranged with Rouven to meet for dinner later that evening, and went back to the hostel to shower, chat with Stella, and meet him. Poor Stella told me that she just got news that her mother had been hospitalized in Toronto with some kind of heart issue. She was making arrangements to go to Toronto asap. She was supposed to join me to visit Vietnam, but now will not be able to as she is going home. I hope everything works out ok, as she is worried as well as being sorry to cut her trip short.

After eating supper at a Khmer restaurant that Rouven had tried, we walked around a bit, then I begged off to go back to my hostel as I was pretty tired from diving and needed to organize my stuff for the 9 am bus trip to Phnom Penh. 

Dec. 28/29

The bus trip from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh was great. If ever you do this trip either way, try to take the Giant Ibis Bus Lines as the buses are roomy, air conditioned, and show movies during the trip. I liked this company because of these things, plus it is one block away from the One Stop Hostel in Phnom Penh, once you get there. Stella and I took this bus, though they overbooked and needed to send two buses, so we didn’t ride together, but arrived at exactly the same time, so that was ok.

Once in Phnom Penh, I took Stella to visit Sopheap at the hair salon. We sat there for a while sipping a cool drink and chatting in between clients, to Sopheap. He is so sweet and arranged for one of his guys that work there, to buy Stella several bags of these spicy, yummy peanuts they put out for the guests. She was going to take them home for presents to Toronto, on her midnight flight.

We went for a street soup on the way back, and then ran into a nice English girl at the hostel. We sat outside with her chatting until Stella had to catch her Tuk Tuk to the airport. Then the English girl, Natalie, and I went for a walk to see some sites and ended up in a new area of town that I had heard about with a great dance club. She loved to dance so we checked it out, but it was too early and no one was there yet. We decided to sit outside at an open place, have a drink and watch people. She was getting up early to go to the Killing Fields, so we didn’t go back to the dance club as it was already getting late.

When we got back to the hostel, another girl I had met said that my friend had returned, saying they messed up on the flight and it had gone at 12:00 the earlier morning, not this evening. Anyway, I looked for Stella, but she had already gone to bed, so I just connected with her in the morning. She had already booked another flight that goes out on Dec. 29th so we went for breakfast, and are now just killing time until I go to the airport for Hanoi.

Well now you’re caught up. Sorry, no more pics, but I will get back at it once in Vietnam.

Love you all.