Day 42

Koh Rong > Kampot

After waking up and packing, I headed to the same place for breakfast as yesterday and ordered some French toast with honey and whilst waiting I grabbed a smoothie and a bottle of water. Alfie came and joined me a little bit after, this time without Daisy as apparently she was suffering the consequences of her sunburn. My food ended up being forgotten and I had to get it to go before I rushed to the pier to catch my ferry. Turns out the ferry wasn't there for another 15 minutes anyways so there wasn't a massive rush. This was the start of 4 days solo travelling and I was quite excited to be honest.

I arrived in Sihanoukville about an hour and a half before my bus was due to leave so I wandered over to the bus company building and dropped my big bag off so I could chill for an hour beforehand. I grabbed a slice of pizza from a bakery and found myself a comfortable chair on the beach I could lounge on for a while. On my way back I grabbed a doughnut from the same place and got back ready to board. Turns out their "bus was broken" so we'd have to wait an extra hour for the replacement. I'm not sure how accurate this actually was as sometimes they say this to delay enough to pool a couple bus loads together if none of their busses are that busy.

Eventually we get on and we start making our ways towards Kampot - a roughly 3 hour journey. We stop about halfway at a rest stop where I go to the toilet and grab an ice cream. We hop back on and as I'm the closest to the sliding door of the minivan I try and close it. Big mistake as I managed to break it. This wasn't entirely my fault, I think they were trying to fix it before we boarded but I definitely did something that pulled it out of its rail. After 10 minutes of our driver finally getting it properly shut, I vowed not to touch the door again. The 2nd half of the journey was super bumpy as the road was more of a gravel trail with lots of pits that our driver tried his best to avoid.

When we arrived I was hounded by tuktuk drivers but I thought I'd rather do the 50 minute walk to save some money and take in the city a little bit. I arrived at my hostel after a walk along a main road and was very excited. This hostel had 2 cool things going for it. 1) I could sleep in a hammock which sounded awesome. 2) It had become a dog sanctuary for now over 40 dogs, and I love animals so I was so excited to spend time with all these dogs. 90% of these dogs had been rescued from some type of difficult past but they were now living a peaceful life at this hostel.

I get talking to a few people (and meeting some of the dogs) and eventually I get invited to join them at a skate spot in the city which sounded awesome as I hadn't skated in ages. 2 of them ride over, whilst me and another get a tuktuk. We then chill at this large flat spot with a ramp, a couple rails and a platform dotted about. It was a good mix of locals and travellers and I got to have a go on one of their skateboards. In good news, I hadn't lost any of my skills I had a couple years before. In bad news, I hardly had any skills to begin with.

Afterwards, much to my delight, we head and grab some food where one of the local guys who worked at the hostel ordered my food for me and mixed a good combination of chilli and other things. We then head to grab some juice and we head back to the hostel. A couple grabbed this selection of guava, apple, and unripe mango with different chili dips which I tried but wasn't a fan of the combination. I chatted with a couple other people (spending most my time on the floor cuddling the dogs of course) before I shower and head to my hammock. My hammock was super close to the guy next to me so I had to be careful not to adjust too much that I'd swing into him, but eventually I found a comfortable position and got some sleep cocooned in my hammock.もっと詳しく