**Sorry for the long delay in posting! We had our beach vacation and a stretch of long travel days without much internet but we are working to get back on track
We made it to Sihanoukville on the night bus and arrived around 6am then took a tuktuk to our hotel at the farthest end of the beach. Although it was a long bus ride, it was great that we were able to get a whole extra day on the beach! We had heard there was some construction near our hotel, which was a little worrisome but once we got here we realized it was a little loud in our room but the beach was blissfully quiet and we could really only hear the waves 🙂 We spent 6 days literally sitting on the beach reading books and listening to podcasts. It was a great break from our busy traveling. We love the travel part but it is a lot of work with planning each next step a few days ahead which takes a lot of reading, internet searches, phone calls and time. We always feel a bit rushed to get things planned and it can be stressful. 6 months of traveling is definitely not 6 months of vacation (but thankfully not a regular job either!)
We BOTH did a lot of swimming (the water was warm like bath water) and had some walks along the beach. The water is clear and shallow for a ways out so no big waves. The tides were crazy though and very unpredictable. The high tides got significantly higher but the low tides got less dramatic, very weird! The low tides were fun because of all the crabs that would come out of the sand. They were very tiny and would make balls of sand that they would roll up their little burrow and spit out onto the sand. It was crazy but fun to see them. We also had some incredible sunsets (and of course sunset cocktails to go with!) We had bought a bottle of rum, juice, seltzer and some whisky to save money and we ended the 6 days with only a little whisky left. We probably would have needed more if I hadn’t been sick with GI stuff most of the time!
Our hotel was lovely with a nice room. We added a few extra days (we had only planned to stay 4 nights then stayed 2 extra nights) and we got upgraded by the lovely manager to a nicer room by the pool. The staff was extraordinary and very friendly. We didn’t love the food but thankfully had some great options at the resorts down the way. 2 hotels down the beach had a great menu with American waiters. The food was good (other than the food poisoning I got – bummer!) but the male waiter was just incredibly obnoxious – the guy chatted with us, pulled up a chair at our table and actually tried a bite of our appetizer! So we started going to the place next door which had excellent (albeit expensive) food and great rose wine.
We were very sad to leave but the hotel filled up the day before we left with all the holiday vacation goers and we had good timing in when we left. We were lucky to be there when it was a bit quieter and less busy. Overall an amazing pre-Christmas vacation!
Mera and Michael Travel 