Somewhere along the way my criteria for a really great hotel room have changed. When we set out I don't think 'walls that meet the roof and don't have cracks that are too big' was a requirement, but being back in a room where bugs aren't handed invitations on silver platters is amazing.
Actually, the Rainbow Lodge near Tatai (though remote bungalows in the jungle) had fairly solid rooms and the mosquito net didn't have any obvious tears. At the bus station in Phnom Penh we bought a newspaper and the ride was only four hours, though the last couple on twisty roads. The bus stopped at the end of a bridge to let us off and we were met by a boat sent by the lodge. A few minutes downstream we arrived at a dock and were met by one of the people who run it. It was a short walk up a dirt path to the scattering of bungalows and dining room where we were briefed on mealtimes and the excursions the lodge had to offer.
Lunch was served until three and we just made it in time. The afternoon was very laid back, filled with reading in hammocks and a swim in the river. There was a huge inner tube we floated in but had to get out because the water was too warm.
I had mixed feelings about having a set time for dinner--on the one hand, everybody eating together is nice but in the other we had had a late lunch and I don't like being told when to eat--but everything was tasty.
The next morning we woke up early to kayak to a waterfall about an hour and a half away from the lodge. I like kayaking even more than my parents, maybe because when I'm lucky it's synonymous with 'best naps ever'. There was a family from a different lodge already at the falls when we arrived but luckily we avoided the major tour groups we passed on our way out.
Under the surface of the water were dozens of smooth, slippery rocks so while we didn't cut ourselves it was really hard to get traction to sit under the rock shelf the water was coming over. Sitting under it was a perfect shoulder massage. The only trick was to not slide off, because you might not be able to stop for fifteen or twenty feet.
It was getting late and the sun strong so we read in the shade of some rocks for a little while before a quick last swim and kayaking back. At the turn to get to the main river we passed a half dozen boats, many filled with monks, and everybody waved enthusiastically as we passed.The return trip was made in exactly an hour, thanks to a feverish sprint at the end. By the time the kayaks were pulled up away from the river and the dry bags returned we still had time for a late lunch. I recommend the pizza-style oven melts. It was still really hot a few hours into the afternoon and we had a second lazy afternoon. There were some paperbacks but none that even vaguely interested me. In Phnom Penh I found a Jodi Picoult book that I suffered through for the sheer joy of turning actual real pages but I didn't even have the questionable luck of finding a similar book this time.
That night we shared a table with a couple from France. The had much less time than us for Cambodia but had already been to Angkor Wat and suggested taking a tuk-tuk around the complex rather than bikes because of the heat.
There were two cats there and the orange one liked to sleep on our porch but I stopped paying attention to it after it attacked my hammock unprovoked.
The next day the plan was to take the lodge's boat back to the waterfalls and kayak home when we were ready but I woke up with a fever and aches and sat out. My parents went without me and I slept for most of the morning and woke up feeling a little better. My fever was back and stronger than ever by nighttime and we were worried that it was dengue but in the morning I was back to normal.
That afternoon there was a thunderstorm for a couple of hours and rain absolutely bucketed down. It was a nice change from the utter dryness of the past couple days and completely eliminated any fears we had of the controlled burns nearby becoming uncontrolled burns.
To catch the bus to Sihanoukville we had to make an early start. After the boat dropped us back at the bridge we waited by the side of the road for some time to be picked up. Surprisingly it was quite prompt and it was with relief that I saw it was a tourist bus instead of a van.
For a while we backtracked up those winding roads but at some point we must have diverged because when we disembarked a few hours later we were in Sihanoukville. From the dingy bus station we took a tuk-tuk first to a grocery store and then to the travel agency the guy had a commission from. After a phone call and some possibly artificial miscommunications we left for the correct travel agency and waited there for the bus to take us to the ferry to take us to Koh Rong Island.
On its way to the docks the bus stopped at a couple places to pick up passengers and by the time it made its last stop people were standing in the aisle and it was almost unbearably hot. It didn't take long to collect bags from the truck that had followed us from town and we found seats on the ferry expeditiously. The ride was only two hours but the benches were uncomfortable and there was an Australian sitting across from us who was a constant talker. He was bellowing about something or other the entire trip.
Upon arriving in Sihanoukville we had wanted to look at a hotel other than the one we were booked for (Paradise Bungalows) but didn't have time. When we first caught a glimpse of the island we saw the stretch of white beach that was separated from town and the majority of hotels by a rocky outcropping. This was where Pura Vita, our back up bungalows, were, and again we regretted the lack of opportunity to look at it when our hotel turned out to be just a short walking from the music-blaring town and they didn't even meet us at the boat. By speaking to people at a couple of the restaurants we found out where they were but dragging rolling bags across fluffy sand was not appealing and my dad walked over there to ask them to send us a boat.
The bungalows had locks on the door but because there was a three-foot gap between the walls and the roof and a perfect step to climb over it I doubt that would have stopped a determined burglar. It certainly didn't stop the bugs.
There was no room to put bags or anything and my bed was a makeshift mat-on-a-bench thing with a torn mosquito net and we used the restaurant's wifi to find out the welcome news that Pura Vita had space for us the following night. With this resolved we enjoyed the amazing beach for a couple of hours.
The next morning a little after ten a boat came for us. It was amazing to get away from the pulsing generator a few feet behind our room and the raucous music! Not to mention our new room, which while airy, had walls that met the ceiling. Pura Vita has three bungalows and two rooms above the restaurant so since we booked last minute we got the rooms. Apart from the fact that the shower and bathroom were in a separate building this was no hardship.
No fans in the room and a hundred degree weather but that doesn't matter when there's an ocean outside. The water here was amazingly clear. Even when I walked out to a depth where I could barely stand I could look down and see the shadow I cast on the sand as if we weren't separated by a few feet of water. The sand--oh, the sand, we saw an empty bag from a shipment of bulk flour and joked that that was what the beach was made of. The sand was so fine, and such a brilliant white. The pictures make it seem way less beautiful and white than it actually was.
After seeing that I had taken over two hundred pictures of the cat that climbed over the roof to hang out in our room my mom announced that I was not a dog person and, though it feels a bit disloyal to Lillie and though I still know that she is obviously far superior to any cat, I may have to agree. Not that I'm a cat person! Maybe I'm both. Right now I'm mostly trying to move past the anti-cat propaganda that my dad has fed me. Regardless, she was really sweet (and photogenic!). Though it's possible that she came and sat on my lap and purred that one time because she wanted my lunch...
It was nice to borrow the paperbacks they had there, and I enjoyed 'The Lincoln Lawyer' and enjoyed poking fun at 'The Forgotten Garden' with my mom. I don't really need to go over our days in detail, but they were filled with beachwalks, lots of swimming, some panting in the shade and scratching of mosquito and sand flea bites, and more swimming.
On one beach walk we found these creatures covered with a sort of sensitive, mobile fur. The design in their back but not their shape suggested at they might be sand dollars but we don't really know.
In the end we were glad for the bugs because without them we would have been just too sad to leave. As it was there was some melancholia as the boat (luckily less crowded this time) pulled away from Koh Rong. Like always the ride back to the mainland seemed much shorter than the one away from it.
Back into the stream, drifting along with when and how people tell us to go where. The packed bus was avoided by a tuk tuk that met us at the dock, and it dropped us off at a Greek restaurant in town for an hour before coming back to take us to this room on the side of the road where the nightbus to Siem Reap came to pick us up and calling a friend with a tuk tuk to meet us when we arrived.
Somehow the bus seemed less comfortable than the Vietnamese ones but I fell quickly back into the pattern of sleeping until my neck or legs cramped up and then switching positions to doze back off.
Unfortunately, as the tuk tuk was pulling away my dad remembered that we had left our instruments on the bus and was able to retrieve them.
It was before seven when we arrived at our hotel so we had an early breakfast upstairs while we waited for our room to be ready. The setup is really nice here, with a dozen or so bungalows, each holding two families in rooms upstairs and two downstairs, set back from the road in a sort of garden. There's also a pool. And it has air conditioning, which is really a necessity in the city.
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