alright. back again. we are settling in for some sand and rays here in sihanoukville, southern cambodia.

the '4000 islands' were very remote.. electricity was on for limited amounts of time at our first little bungalow, and our last night spent on another island had none.. we rented bikes our second afternoon and road all around the 2 islands we occupied during our stay.. kind of reminded me of the movie 'now and then' with our gang of girls riding our colored wheels over the dirt roads, singing and talking about life.. rice fields on one side, trees and huts on the other.. dodging water buffalo and stray dogs along the way.. it was crazy taking the boat out there and barely seeing treetops sticking out from the rushing water.. hard to imagine that the rainy season is only just beginning there.. there aren't 4000 islands this time of year i don't think..

took a boat back to the mainland and boarded a gruesome bus ride down to siem reap.. at one point we were attempting (..successfully, thank god) to drive through a lake, basically. there really is no other way to explain it.. water all around us.. a small mud island about 10 meters away.. waiting for the engine to stall out and for us to get washed out to sea.. hours later i was woken by some rapid swerving and brakes, only to see that we were in fact swerving through what looked more like a gravel pit with random gravel piles, and much less like a road.. what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.

day one was angkor wat. breath-taking. one of the 7 man-made wonders of the world.. we spent the entire morning and afternoon there, very thankful for our tuk tuk driver.. we walked around 5 temples (one an abandoned city and none small), each one very unique and beautiful.. some of the girls said one day was enough, but i can understand how some people take a few days to go check it all out.. we saw the infamous 'tomb raider' temple with the 100+ year old trees sporting roots as thick as.. (tree trunks are presumably a bad descriptive choice..?) growing over the ruins and around passageways..

we went to a cute little alleyway full of restaurants and pubs for supper and spent the next day checking out the city. we got massages at a seeing-eye hands place which was pretty neat. we walked by the same place later on and they were all sitting on the step calling out for us to come in, so we had to explain we'd already been! they were all so wonderful.

which brings me back to the aformentioned beach.. glorious.