Name That Smell!: How do you say 'beach' in Hebrew?

Kep - It's a small town on the southern coast of Cambodia... well, town may not be the right word... two isolated streets converging on a roundabout and a handful of seafood restaurants may be a better description. After a lot of late nights in Phnom Penh, a change of pace was welcomed - even if we did feel a little too close to nature in our garden bungalow surrounded by frogs and roosters. We hired push bikes and rode down to the beach, dodging cows and dogs on the road along the way, ate the freshest seafood and chatted to the locals... that's about all there is to do in Kep. The next day we decided to move onto the next town. 40 minutes in a tuktuk later and we arrived in Kampot, having been greeted with cries of "Helloooooo!" from every villager along the way.

Kampot is a strange place. A riverside town in disrepair, the old French colonial buildings resemble something out of a ghost movie and the town is somewhat of a ghost town. Although Kampot is about 8 times larger than Kep, we still found that there was very little to do there given the mountain, that is the towns main draw card, was 'closed'... so we took a sunset river cruise in a little 'authentic' (read; crappy, un-sea worthy, leaky) boat, which was a highlight.

Most of the buildings in Kampot shared this state of disrepair.

Keen to step things up a little, we booked ourselves on a bus to Sihanoukville - the party beach of southern Cambodia. We were excited at the prospect of some beach time (and some human interaction after 3 days of barely seeing another soul), and we eagerly boarded our 7am bus to part-ay town (as eagerly as one can do anything at 7am). About 40 minutes into the trip, we looked out the window only to see our bungalow guest house in Kep passing by. Erm... this is the complete opposite direction to where we were supposed to be going. After a little confusion, we discovered that we'd somehow been put on the bus back to Phnom Penh... NO! We want beach!

A few phone calls later between the bus guy and the guest house guy in Kampot (who sold us the ticket), we were standing on the side of the deserted street waiting to be picked up by a tuktuk that our Kampot guest house had sent to collect us and take us back to Kampot. Once back in Kampot, the apologetic guest house owner had a share taxi waiting to take us to Sihanoukville at no extra cost. Nice guy.

Share taxi... now, there's an interesting experience. To save on costs, Cambodian taxi drivers aim to squeeze as many people as humanly possible into one car over a long distance. Our trip to Shinaoukville was luxury with our standard 5 seater taxi carrying 7 people the 2 hours to the beach. Of course, no journey of ours would be complete without a few fruit-cakes in the mix. This time we had; (in the back seat with us) stinky French guy and his Cambodian girl friend who liked to leaf through magazines pointing out all the white people and wait until we put our earphones in to start talking to us. Sharing the front seat we had "The Mute" and the red-bull-guzzling Cambodian granny who, after guzzling her red-bull, suffered from verbal diarrhea and profuse sweating... we're surprised her heart held out the whole trip.

Arriving in Sihanoukville, we checked into a bungalow overlooking the sea and headed out for a relaxing day on the beach... or so we thought. Choruses of "lady, you want bracelet/ massage/ manicure/ pedicure... you buy from me... you promise me... maybe later... where you from? G'day mate... dingo stole your baby... etc etc" made the day a whole lot less relaxing and more expensive than we'd anticipated, but after we'd been massaged, manicured and plucked to within an inch of our lives, we enjoyed getting to know the friendly beach sellers and quickly made favourites/BFF's. An older woman named Annie became our Cambodian mum, and we now have a number of adopted little sisters. All good fun.

Amy with one of the girls selling bracelets and Annie our Cambodian mum.

The view from our bungalow.

Sunset on Serendipity beach.

As we settled down for a beer after dinner on our first night, we bumped into a few Israeli guys we'd met in Phnom Pehn (actually, I think they were following us). Alex/Bob - whose hair bares a striking resemblance to a blonde Sideshow Bob, and Nitzan/George - who is an uncanny cross between George Michael and George Clooney. We spent the next week bar hopping and beach bumming with these two and a brood of Israelis they'd met along the way (yeah, we're fluent in Hebrew now too). Many a Mekong bucket was consumed and many a sunrise was seen in Sihanoukville, making it somewhat difficult to leave... but eventually we did... nursing nasty hangovers.