The coach journey from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville was hard work. I wanted to look out of the window but the woman in front kept pulling the shared blind down – it was a battle, we settled on having it open enough for me to just about enjoy the view. And the noise was so intense and hard to turn off, not only was music being piped through the speakers but no-one seemed to have headphones for their mobile phones and everyone had their volume turned up high either listening to music or watching tic-took videos – it was hard to switch it all off. At one point we stopped for the toilet and there was no water, not even to flush the toilet, so I got my hand sanitizer out and offered it to one lady and before I knew it I had a queue of Cambodian ladies all wanting a squirt of it – I was happy to oblique and I got lots of smiles from them when I got back on the coach.

I was distraught at the amount of rubbish lining the road, and nearly all of it was plastic, it was relentless until we got near to Sihanoukville, I was saddened by it all, and the fact that people have to live with it, eat and sleep next to it and children play in it. I wonder if the Cambodian people have become so used to it they are now blind to it. Once we were near SHV, the rubbish became far less intense but this was really only where there were new builds, obviously there is money in these areas.

I think today, well at least this evening has been my worst, most frustrating, I don’t like Cambodia experience yet. The day started off well, I got a ticket on the midday coach to Sihanoukville without a hiccup and had an hour to spare so I went and had pork and noodle soup for breakfast. Getting to the coach was reminiscent of a previous journey in Thailand, I was put onto one tuk-tuk which delivered me to a stop and then put on another tuk-tuk which delivered me to the coach station. On the coach I booked a hostel that I thought was on a beach near Sihanoukville, but when they emailed confirming the reservation, they told me that the only boat to the island of Koh Ta Kiev was at 12.30pm, I was arriving at 6pm and a private boat to the island cost $30 as opposed to the $7 they quoted me. Easy peasy, or so I thought, and I booked myself into a room for the night in Sihanoukville, I even tried to cancel the island hostel thinking I may like a couple of days in SHV – so bloody glad I couldn’t work out how to cancel it. Anyway, on arrival I got in a tuk-tuk and it was the slowest bloody thing I have ever been in and to top it all the driver was, although very sweet, totally incompetent. The hostel, Miracle Hostel, was only 5 minutes from the bus station, 20 minutes later the driver tries to drop me off down some dark deserted street – no way – and Google maps was telling me that we were still 5 minutes away from [a] Miracle. There was no phone number for the hostel on the booking confirmation and to top it all off my phone had 10% battery left. Anyway, somehow or another I directed the driver to where Google said Miracle was but it was not there, so we went back on the main road and asked some guys, at that point my phone died ☹ and low and behold the guys directed us to the place we had just been – OMG – and the tuk-tuk driver, yet again, wanted to drop me off in the middle of nowhere, now with no phone, and he even expected me to pay him – no way ho-say. I left my rucksack in his tuk-tuk and stated to walk toward what looked like a sign for a guesthouse, he followed behind me (yes, his tuk-tuk was that slow), obviously not wanting to lose his fair.

So now I am in a room that is more like an American style motel where you would take a prostitute and it’s costing me $15 for the night for the privilege of listening to an orgy going on upstairs. I have emailed the Island hostel to tell them I am still coming – I so hope I still have a room there – God knows what happened to [my] Miracle, but it certainly wasn’t where it was supposed to be. And I hate Sihanoukville – I may as well be in China – all the buildings and neon lights and all the signs for all the (knocking) shops and millions of casinos etc. are in Cambodian and Chinese – it is horrific – a truly Americanized but Chinese city, kind of what I expect Las Vegas to be like and, although I only went to the corner shop, I recon this place is a pure knocking shop, worse than the area of Phnom Penh I stayed in – at least that looked lie what I expected Cambodia to look like, well most of it did. So, to calm my stress levels (lol) I’ve just been reading about the Chinese influence on Cambodia, and it is disgusting, basically they have bought Cambodia for 600 million pounds worth of investment and guess where all the profit goes… At least Phnom Penh, although living in the shadow of Cambodia’s genocidal past, had some originality to it – I was much happier there – I hope the island is better cause if it not then I think I will do Siam Reap, Angkor Wat, perhaps Kampot, and then get the fuck out of this country – I really am not enjoying it.