On sleeping and a rough ride to Siem Reap

Sleep, or lack of, is very important to me, particularly when travelling. I always want to have the energy to do everything on the itinerary but I'm not 20 anymore so I can't go days without sleep. So some notes.....

Never, ever take a sleeping pill to grab 40 winks. You may find out you wake 4 and a half hours later and have missed something great. This happened to me in Phnom Penh, but more on that later. There are lots of corollary's to this however....
Don't ever take a sleeping pill or herbal sleeping aid before a night out, as you will likely be a little dazed and confused throughout the night and alcohol will not help.
Sleeping pills ARE actually super for napping on buses, trains, boats etc...just ensure your baggage is safe.
I also found them good for when you really do need to get some sleep (i.e physically demanding trek next day)
Valerian root is a good herbal alternative. Two of these and you'll be gonzo after about twenty mins... for at least 4 hours, even if you're a dreadful sleeper like me.

A well-travelled friend once told me how herself and friends used to lie perpendicular with their legs against a wall, the blood rushes to the head making it great for a quick nap. Whenever I think about her I can never get this image out of my head (4 girls in a hostel in India, asleep with their legs in the air).

When we left Koh-Rong we wanted to get to Siem Reap in the easiest manner possible. After our usual hour or two sleep, we got up and out of our hut (7am!), had breakfast a little further along the beach and then boarded our boat back to Sihanoukville, a little sorry to be leaving the paradise of the island. From there it was a minibus to town and we thought we might catch a bus to Siem Reap directly. We were wrong, even though it was only noon, it had already left. So hot, bothered and tired we decided to get a taxi. I may have mentioned this before but SERIOUSLY - Agree taxi fares in advance, say you will pay half first and half WHEN YOU REACH YOUR DESTINATION. April and I got nicely ripped off whilst on our way from Sihanoukville to Siem Reap. We said we would pay for a taxi the whole way {thinking it would save time and be more comfortable...ah the naivety of the little travelled}. We paid USD 130. This IS a rip-off. When your tired and realise you have probably about 7 hours of travel ahead, it seems a small price to pay. Our first taxi driver was on the phone constantly, he also didn't speak a single word of English. The A/C didn't work, as such I had guzzled 2 litres of water an hour into the trip and we were both soaked with sweat. Opening the window was infinitely worse as most Cambodian roads are dusty, and it was pretty humid outside too. We were unceremoniously dumped on the side of the road in Phnom Penh where another gent picked us up. He was very friendly but he was an absolutely chaotic driver and when it got dark we genuinely weren't sure if we would make it out of that car alive. There are no street lights on these roads, no railings and many places were flooded due to recent rains. We had two seriously near misses where he actually screamed, we landed (Yes, we had been slightly air-bound momentarily!) on the road and he laughed maniacally, telling us that had been close. April and I were actually holding hands at this stage. He also claimed many times that he hadn't been paid but I point blank refused to pay another cent. We had already paid 130USD for one taxi which had turned into two!! Also, rather than just get to Siem Reap we had to stop at a roadside restaurant for he and his friend to eat (oh yes, he also picked up a random friend on the way! Two girls with two men in a taxi in a foreign country at night, we were imagining the headlines). I just wanted to get there. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep due to the wild driving and also I badly needed the toilet. In Siem Reap he wanted to bring us to another hostel, a usual ploy of taxi and tuk-tuk drivers, but again I stood fast on the place we had booked. I am sure the man thought I was an awful bitch but I hadn't slept properly for 3 nights, hadn't had a proper shower in the same amount of time and we had been travelling from 8am that morning (We reached Siem Reap around 11.15pm). I cannot express our manic delight when we checked into Siem Reap Rooms.
http://www.hostelworld.com/hosteldetails.php/Siem-Reap-Rooms/Siem-Reap/31747
 It was gorgeous. Set down a quiet street, it was pristinely clean, there were sandwiches available even though we had checked in late and the gruff owner Phil was so helpful to us.
I will never forget how April and I were nearly delirious with glee to discover that hot water came out of the fully functioning shower in our lovely, clean, spacious room. We were actually giggling as we washed our feet together and then clambered into huge comfy single beds for hours of interrupted sleep.

Koh-Rong - off the map

Koh-Rong is two hours off the coast of Southern Cambodia, technically somewhere in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand. To anyone else in the world - it's Timbuktoo or Narnia, not many will ever get to go there but believe me it's worth it.

It's basically a like a beachfront village. There is no five-star accomodation here - in fact I think the tree-top hut April and I inhabited for our stay ($15) was about as classy as it gets. The only disconcerting part was that after we'd walked down the wooden quay to the beach (after getting off the boat) we entered Coco's (after removing our flip flops - everyone in the bar is barefoot) and the first thing I hear is a Dublin accent.... Almost 11, 000 km from home...sure where else?

Our hut - Fabulous, although we were convinced there was a polar bear from "Lost" underneath it one night. This may have had something to do with copious amounts of alcohol and some hallucinogenics... we didn't plan on the hallucinogenics by the way.... but on a remote island in South East Asia...well, let's say you're always going to get more than you planned for.

There is very little electricity on the island. Coco's had a generator but all the lights outside the bar go off around 1am. We made our way back to the hut in the dark or by candlelight, we also heard alot of other people falling around the place in the dark late at night.

The few days spent there were passed in a hazy bliss, massages overlooking the sea as the sun went down.... delicious noodle soup served in a shack which had a roof but only two walls (people lived there and dogs and chickens ran all around our feet), snoozing in the sunshine after swimming in crystal clear waters, drinking suspect cocktails at Coco's and dancing to questionable Euro-pop with other backpackers who'd found the island, eating fresh fish that the man went out and caught right in front of us in the ocean - with a spear no less, watching youths learning to become flame-throwers....It was all a little surreal.

My favourite little pup - BBQ!

Sandflies and puppies and Phil, the traveller from Manchester who was completely spaced out, we didn't know if he'd been there 4 days, 4 months or 4 years. I had breakfast with him one morning where we had a long discussion (mostly him - I was still recovering from casting Harry Potter spells in the bar the previous night) about how it would be if we could all read eachother's minds. Phil eventually came to the conclusion that it would be a bad idea. Excerpt as follows:

Phil: It would be bad, really bad....(spaces out for a bit - I'm still looking at him) bad, man, ye know?

Me: Yeah

Phil: Like I'm a nice guy, a bright guy and I know alot of stuff, but sometimes...sometimes I just think - I'd like to kill you, ye know?

Me: Yeah (Note I didn't even argue here, maybe I too was spaced out)

Phil: Not you personally but you know when you meet someone really stupid.....stupid, stupid (pointing at his head)

Me: Yeah

Phil: Well, like that, you're like Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! in your head like, and I wouldn't want people to know that

Me: Yeah, I know what you mean Phil.

And then he lay down on the bench again, staring into space, with one hand up shaped like a claw. He was an interesting guy.

Paradise

Standards and habits that you have at home need to go by the wayside when you're traveling. April managed to wash her hair each day in the cold water, but I mostly just had a swim in the sea and a sponge down afterwards, my hair was in an interesting condition after three days but my skin was ultra soft! I lived in a bikini and sometimes threw a ti-shirt over it.

All the children on the island are schooled in one room - which has a roof but is otherwise open air. We could hear them learning their colours in English as we passed down the beach. Absolutely charming. These people are poor though and rarely go to the mainland, we would see them washing their clothes in the sea and the clothes lines hung across the trees. They are so friendly though, always smiling. The children would run down the beach after us and giggle shyly if we said hello or waved.

There's wonderful diving and snorkelling off the island. You can even go at night, as the sharks come out then :) We were content just to read and swim and take it all in, the longest walk we managed was about twenty minutes.

There will be gecko's and mice in your room, and possibly other things too, but I thought of a hut on a lake in Thailand two years previously and just decided to go with it. There's no point stressing over these things when you're traveling - you just won't enjoy it as much. Which is not to say that I didn't sleep in with April, and all her luggage, whilst on the island (I found fresh droppings in my bed....when my mossie net had been up...) but then there's more stories in there.

Koh Rong is due for redevelopment soon, which is a real pity. I think they are going to stick some five star resort on it, and you can see why, but they will definitely destroy some of the wonderful magic they have going on there.