Life In A Bag ... Off The Beaten Track ...

Day 111 ... It was time to pack up (again!) and leave Phnom Penh (thank goodness!). I won't lie, it wasn't our favourite place, in fact, probably the worst place we've visited so far. So dirty, busy, seedy and smelly. I didn't really like walking around the place because of Helen being mugged there, it made me super paranoid! Anyway, after our five and a half hour bus journey we arrived in Sihanoukville. A random place on the coast which has what looks like a main city centre with a few high rise buildings and some beaches which I've heard are dirty and full of rubbish but I'm hoping that's not true. We'll go for a walk tomorrow and scope the area out. There are a couple of islands which are supposed to be beautiful, Koh Rong especially, so we will catch a boat there one day if the weather sorts itself out. It's cloudy and a bit wet today. we had a walk to find some food and see what was about, which isn't really much to be honest, just some local restaurants, a couple of shops and hotels. Looks like it may be a relaxing few days in the hotel planning our Philippines trip!

Day 112 ... After a huge thunder storm and the loudest thunder I've ever heard last night, which obviously didn't even make Adam flinch in the slightest. We woke up to cloud and a little bit of sunshine. So after breaki we had a walk to the beach which is only 5 minutes away and dropped off some laundry along the way. We're risking it as our clothes are getting a bit desperate now! The beach was nice enough, clean and long but my legs got bitten by sand flies. And the sun only stayed out for 10 minutes so we went to get lunch and then back to the hotel after Adam got all motivated to get on with his app again.

Day 113 ... We found a great place for dinner last night, somewhere that actually does meat and veg! So we'll be going back tonight. Adam had a great steak for less than $10. And seeing as our breaki cost $8 this morning and lunch doesn't cost much more, we can splash out on a couple of nice evening meals. its another cloudy, rainy day today. So I'm hoping the WiFi works okay in the hotel so we can get some Philippines flights booked for next week. While having our lovely steak and veg dinner at the restaurant we found last night, we had an idea. What if we moved our flight home to the day of Charlotte's first Birthday, so we land and surprise everyone at Charlotte's family 1st Birthday party!!!! Also the main reason for moving the flight would be so we're not jet lagged for Hayley's wedding AND Adam could go snow boarding for a week before the wedding with Danny with the money we'll save not travelling in Asia for the last 2 weeks. So it's kind of a no brainer. I can't stop smiling at the idea of surprising Robyn, Mum and Dad when they all arrive at Robyn's house for the party!! I've just got to keep it secret from them for the next 6 weeks! I've emailed Flight Centre to enquire about the cost of moving the flights home but I'm pretty sure it will be around £75 each which isn't too bad considering everything else! Adam and I are saying how funny it is that we've planned this trip so much but now we only have 6 weeks left and planning our trip home. But we've also just gone through our whole trip saying what we've done and where we've stayed and realising how much we have done already!!

Day 114 ... Woken up to more grey skies this morning, fair to say this hasn't been the most successful trip so far. We've not really seen any of the area or neighbouring islands because of the weather. We've got our bus back to Phnom Penh at 8.30am tomorrow so we'll be packing up today after another

relaxing day doing some more research for Philippines. We managed to get an hour of sunshine round the pool at lunchtime. When it's out it's so hot and the sun is super strong here! So an hour was just nice to top the tan up. Then we went for a walk to the restaurant for lunch and back to the hotel to make plans! We've got a reply from Flight Centre to amend our flights home. It will cost us £152pp to change the flights to the 7th March but we've worked out we'll be saving a lot coming home earlier and Adam can use that money towards his snowboard trip! So that's sorted, we've got 42 days left until we go home! Plenty time to get round the places we want to visit in the Philippines and Vietnam!

Day 115 ... So I thought I had set my alarm early enough to get breakfast at the hotel and check out in time to get a tuktuk to the Giant Ibis depot to catch our 8.30am bus. But by the time we were checking out and getting in the tuktuk it was 8.05am and we were supposed to be there by 8am ish. When the tuktuk driver asked what time our bus was a we replied with '8.30am', he made me panic because he looked more panicked than we did!! He seemed to think we were cutting it a little fine and so once we were loaded up with our bags, he literally floored it along the potholed road over taking everyone to get us there in time. We got there 10 minutes before the bus leaves so plenty time, I don't know what he was panicking about!! After a 5 and half hour journey with a stop to pick up another Baileys frappuccino (soo good!) we arrived back in Phnom Penh. Got a tuktuk to our hotel, after battering with the driver from $5 to $3 and then when we arranged for him to pick us up the next day for the airport he knocked it down to $2 without us saying anything! He tried to say our hotel was far away and it was literally 2 minutes away! We're well travelled travellers now, we know all (most of) the tricks of the trade and common cons now! Nice try mate!