The Cinematic Experience

After our little night out, and all the free drinks, we had a lie-in. Today we are moving rooms because we wanted a cheap $8 room, but none were available until today. However, the new room isn't ready when we check-out of the old room. Outside it's awful weather - a sheet of grey covering the sky and raining. When breakfast is done with, the new room still isn't ready. We've been a bit annoyed with the service at this guesthouse for various reasons and having to wait for our room was one more annoying thing to add to the list. We wanted to get on with our day and not be waiting around with our big bags. We trotted to the guesthouse next door and haggled down the cost of a room from $10 to $8, stomped back into the other guesthouse for our bags, and stomped back out again. All of a sudden, the room was apparently ready, but we said "No, thank you", proceeding to take our business elsewhere.

We made a quick stop at an all-in-one internet cafe and travel booking agency so that Rachelle could email the bus company about her phone, and so that we could book tickets to Battambang for the following evening. It's another night bus, but this time we're on a sitting-bus, not sleeper-bus, and we ensured our seats would be together. Outside there had been no change in the weather. At a beach-side bar we had cola and hoped the sun would come out.

With no sign of the sun and our cola cans empty we went for lunch, and it was pizza. Sihanoukville is mainly all about the beach and beach bars, but the bad weather was clearly here to stay, meaning another beach bar is all we could really do. Sat under cover, overlooking the rainy beach, we drank beers and cocktails into the late afternoon.

For dinner we wanted to try our new guesthouse's restaurant, which looked very nice, and we weren't let down. It was Indian Curry Night, and it was good value. Rachelle liked the dessert most - banoffie pie for her, cheesecake for me. When our hunger was satisfied, we were left with a decision about what to do with the evening. We could go round bars again, or go to the 'Cinema'. We chose 'Cinema', and it needs to be in inverted commas because it's not the conventional cinema I'm used to. For $3 per person, you rent a private room, complete with sofa, en-suite bathroom, minibar, and a 52" HD television. Then you ask the man for a film and he brings a pirated DVD for you to put on the DVD player. We chose to watch Hangover 2 and it included people walking in front of the camera to go to the toilet or refill their popcorn buckets. I suppose, in a way, it made it more like a cinema experience.