Burnt To A Crisp

When Rachelle pulls back the curtain to look outside, her report on the weather is exactly what we want. A beaming sun and a bright blue sky. Before we can go out to the beach, we have to check-out, leave our bags with the guesthouse, and eat giant omelettes from the restaurant. Then it's sea, sun and sand for the rest of the day. 

We chose beach loungers - again, they are free when you buy a drink - and set up camp. I take off my swimming shorts, revealing my small ones underneath, and placed them on the end of the lounger, and then I lounged. When I opened my eyes next, I saw a dog sniffing at the shorts placed by my feet. Then he turned around, lifted up his hind leg, and marked territory on my shorts. I was in so much shock and disbelief in what had occurred, that I didn't grab the shorts before the dog turned around, lifted his other hind leg, and did it again. I wasn't happy and didn't see the point in marking your territory on something that isn't static. I grabbed the pissy-pants and took them to the sea. 

The waves weren't as big as two days ago, but every now and then you'd get one. I went to try and body surf any big ones that came along whilst Rachelle read her book. I noticed that there were more occurrences of big waves to the left of our loungers and headed that way. When I returned to shore after about 30 minutes, Rachelle had moved along the beach to new loungers with an umbrella. She said I had left her to "burn to a crisp". She wasn't happy about being burnt to a crisp. After some shade, we moved back into the sun to work on tanning. I kept a look out for dogs. 

By the end of the day it seemed I was the one who had burnt to a crisp. My upper, exposed legs (due to my short shorts) and nose are particularly pink in colour. The second time a sun versus suncream battle has ended with victory for the sun. We went back to the guesthouse to get changed in the restaurant toilet and eat before our taxi picks us up at 7:15PM.

Despite asking for seats next to each other when we booked, seats six and seven were not next to each other. I had actually worked this out earlier in the day by mapping out a bus layout in my mind. The bus wasn't full yet, so we just sat in two that were side-by-side. It worked out. It's a ten hour journey and we are dreading it. We know it's not going to be a good night sleep.

Five hours into the journey we arrive somewhere and need to change buses. We hadn't known about this, but thought fair enough. What did raise my eyebrows was finding out from Rachelle that the city we are changing in is Phnom Penh. We have traveled all the way back east to the capital again. It's then another five hours west to Battambang. Why the Cambodia buses did this, I do not know. I probably never will. 

Rachelle felt cold due to the air-conditioning and went into her hand-luggage looking for her raincoat so that she could look ridiculous again. It was dark on the bus and she ended up cutting her finger badly whilst searching her bag. She was also desperate for the toilet, but bags and a moped blocked the way to the on-board facilities. It wasn't a good journey for her overall.