Having fun in Kompong Som

Kompong Som - Sandy Beach Bar - two brothers, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

Yes, we had great fun in Kompong Som, mainly down at the Sandy Beach Bar with our new friends Oun and Chheng, with whom we spent the last two evenings, ending up at the Angkor Tech Disco last night until about 2' ish. Great fun! (More pics on flickr).

Less fun was getting up this morning at 6.20 in readiness for the bus back to Phnom Penh at 7.45, but we managed to get some sleep on the bus and have taken it easily today. We found a much better place to stay for just 10 dollars a night, but will leave tomorrow, catching a boat to Chau Doc in Vietnam. We have committed ourselves to a four day tour of the Mekong Delta, first taking a bus to a port a little further down the river, then taking a boat to the border. After that it is messing about on boats and coaches, visiting many of the more famous sites on the Delta. The tour is very cheap - just 44 dollars, including transport and hotel accommodation. We will see how we get on. If we do not like it, I am sure we would be at liberty to catch the next bus on to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City.

We will be very sad to leave Cambodia, as we have met and had to say goodbye to, many lovely people, but that is the lot of travellers, I suppose.

Will maybe write more later, but I had better go and see how Richard is doing back at the Garden Bar, where we share a special friend. Her boss allows her to drink with us so long as the drink costs more than 3 dollars and provided she does not sit down with us. This is really quite good, as we are a bit tired of the girlie bars (not that we have spent much time in them, but we do not much care for that sort of scene).

Fred and I can make for difficult travellers at times and Richard and I are the same in some ways, one of our things being that we rather frequesnt places which play Cambodian or Thai music rather than Western rubbish and indeed this evening we refused to sit in a restaurant as they told us the CAN NOT change the music to Khmer, because so-called other Western tourists don't seem to like it. Why they bother travelling when they are either with their i-pods or in bars drinking beer, I do not know.

Anyway, before we leave Cambodia, just a few lasting impressions:

1 The rice paddies with the sugar palms
2 The white cows everywhere in the countryside
3 The monk's houses, with their saffron robes draped out for drying, having been washed
4 The tuk tuk drivers always asking if we want women, nice women, young women
5 The smiles and waves of the children in the countryside
6 The exclamation "Wow!"
7 Everyone guessing that Richard is older then me (he he)!
8 The serious efforts being made to educate the population about sex tourism and AIDS
9 The never ending stream of children leaving school on their bicycles, dressed in white shirts and blue socks
10 The good friends we have made here

Odd to think that in all probability we are unlikely to come back here, together or individually, but I am very glad that we did.. and a good choice of Richard to choose Cambodia.