The Rain

**As a precursor: there was a LOT of frustration during this week, we nearly hit bottom as we went through it, so excuse me if some of the writing has a hint of bitterness.**

The bus ride down to the coast from Phnom Penh was easy, and it was sunny pretty much the whole way there. We got to Sihanoukville, checked into our hostel and headed down to see the beach area. We were pretty much sold in the first 10 minutes we were there. All along the beach were awesome restaurants serving 1$ drinks and 3$ BBQ. The barbecue was nothing short of amazing, serving your choice of fresh squid, shrimp, barracuda, beef, chicken and pork. All along the beach were comfy chairs set out where you could sit and enjoy cheap drinks.  Women would walk along the beach carrying two baskets which were balanced on their shoulders with a long bamboo rod. On one they delicately balanced a live BBQ with skewered squids packed on top of the grill. You could get 10 for a dollar. The squid lady was followed by the deep fried lobster lady (5 little ones for a dollar), who was followed by the foot massage lady. The haggling became annoying after a while, but we thoroughly our afternoon.


The local kids there hawked the beach day and night, so we were constantly surrounded by kids asking if we wanted a bracelet or sunglasses. One of our favourites was a 15 year old lady-boy who went by 'Beyonce'. She hung around us for an hour making bracelets for free, begging to thread my legs, and singing Lady Gaga songs. She was incredibly entertaining, although the threading was terrrible, and relentless... Kev and Beyonce were pretty entertained though.

After this, we headed out to a bar along the beach that had fire dancers spinning batons on fire, and two dollar buckets of whiskey and coke, which we thoroughly enjoyed! The staff there were mostly backpackers who had found themselves spending a bit more time than planned in Sihanoukville. We hung out with them all night, and paid for it in the morning.

The next day we woke up to rain, but luckily, we were super hungover and had bought seasons 1-5 of Curb Your Enthusiasm in Phnom Penh, so Kevin got knee deep in that while I skyped in the hostel lobby and we waited out the rain. It stopped raining in the afternoon, so we headed down to the beach! We sat around, read our books, swam in the Gulf of Thailand for the first (hopefully of many) time! It was a really relaxing afternoon, and we were so happy to finally be on a beach. We started planning for some island excursions from Sihanoukville, maybe out to do some scuba diving or deep sea fishing. Unfortunately, we had gotten way ahead of ourselves, and the next few days definitely did not abide by our plans.

We woke up the next morning, on a Tuesday to POURING rain. Not just like, spitting or drizzling, straight up monsoon style downpour. And while we thought that we could outlast it, this rain literally didn't stop for the next 12 hours. We felt pretty much confined to our hostel, because there wasn't that much to see or explore around town, and it doesn't exactly make sense to hang out on a beach while it rains. There weren't museums or cultural centers, or anything else remotely interesting except for the beach, and its rain soaked beach chairs. So instead of going out to islands like we were hoping, we pretty much spent the next three days perfecting our pool game and playing hand after hand after hand of rummy 500 (which ended up being rummy 5 000 000). It definitely wasn't the magical beach adventure we were hoping for, but we tried to stay positive and enjoy ourselves while we waited out the rain. Ultimately, by Friday night we realized that the rain wasn't going to stop, and we were going absolutely stir crazy sitting in the hostel. We had to admit defeat, and move on, even though it was hard to do without getting any good sun/beach time. In the end, we were on the back end of three straight days of rain, countless hours of cards, pool, and Curb.

So Friday night we hopped on an overpriced (by Asian standards) overnight bus to Siem Reap to see the temples of Angkor Wat.  Angkor Wat is seen on the Cambodian flag, on most Cambodian beers, and on evvvvvvvvvvery single postcard. It was a definite must for our trip and it was well set to drag us out of our rained out beach vacation. We were doing a great job pumping each other up and looking forward to the temples, instead of dwelling on our failed coastal excursion. The overnight bus was a bit of a nightmare. It was 11 hours, it was FREEZING, we were sitting beside the bathroom, which reeked, and it was super loud. Luckily, I had earplugs (thanks hal), so I managed to get a couple hours of sleep, but Kevin was pretty much up all night. His limbs dangled out of his seat and people walking by for the bathroom stepped on him and into him all night.  It was one of our worst transportation experiences, but we figured it was all part of our bad luck spree, and at least we were going somewhere cool.

We got to Siem Reap on Saturday early morning and asked our tuk-tuk driver to take us to a hostel we had found online. In his broken English he told us that the hostel was 'underwater' but he had a better place to take us. I figured he was just trying to take us somewhere where he got a cut of the profit, but I couldn't have been more wrong. After running out of gas in the tuk-tuk on the way there, we got to the centre of town and realized that the ENTIRE town was flooded. The tuk-tuk broke down in the water a second time and we all had to get out to push it the rest of the way. The water was up to mid-calf at the shallowest sections and chest high at the deepest. While people were still out and about, it was clear that this wasn't going to be the easy travel that we were hoping for. By the time we got to the hotel, it had started raining again. We went inside, trying not to freak out. We checked into our room and waited out the rain. Once the rain had stopped we decided to try venturing out into town to see some of the local attractions, and wait till Sunday to go to Angkor Wat.  After asking about some of the local museums and craft shops we realized that the floods hadn't just changed our sleeping arrangements, the floods had shut down most of the town!

We walked into town, and along the main road, water was nearly up to my knees, kids were floating around in basins, and people were frantically closing the doors to their shops so water wouldn't get in. It didn't take us long to figure out that all the great things we had heard about Siem Reap were NOT going to be accessible to us. Tuk-tuks were barely going anywhere because the engines would just flood if they tried to get through the streets. Once again, we found ourselves pretty much stranded in our hostel with Curb and our books. We even decided to give pool a shot in the 4 inches of water on the ground floor of our hostel (which increasingly smelled like sewage throughout the day).

We decided before bed Saturday that if we woke up to the same weather Sunday we were just going to leave. We weren't going to sit around and be upset that we didn't get to Angkor, we were just going to have to postpone it to another time of our trip. While we were there, and for the two days before, tourists had been airlifted by helicopter from the temples. While this sounded like an entertaining story, dwindling funds, and nonexistent enthusiasm turned us around. The transportation to and from the temples was sounding sketchier and sketchier, and we just didn't feel like it made sense to see the temples under those circumstances. We decided it made more sense to just wait and see them on a long weekend or tack them on to the end of our travels, whenever that is!

BEGRUDGINGLY, feelings extremely slighted by luck, we decided to book a bus back to Phnom Penh in order to get our 60 day tourist visa that we were going to need in order to take time and find jobs back in Thailand!  We had to make it out the hostel and to the bus station first without the help of a tuk-tuk. With a 6 hour bus ride ahead of us and an omnipresent driving rain between us and the bus station, we suited up for our trek. Kev had to go in a bathing suit, with dry clothes packed away and I was forced to be the blueberry sherpa, keeping all essentials and dry clothes packed away under our only useful (bright blue) poncho.

Looking back on the week of rain, its easy to laugh about it. Having that much bad luck in one week is ridiculous, and the way it all went down is pretty hilarious. But, at the time, it really wasn't very funny to us at all. It was a hard week, filled with frustrations and obstacles. We got sick of each other, sick of the weather, sick of feeling like prisoners in our hostels, and just sick of it all in general. On the bright side, we came out of the week with some real strength. We were able to get through it, pretty much unscathed. We stuck together, didn't bite each other's heads off, and even managed to have some fun along the way. Hopefully, we won't have to face that kind of week long challenge again, but if we do, I'm fairly confident that we'll get through it, just like we did this past week.