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Friday I hadn't had another great sleep as I'd been up in the night with a bad stomach (this tends to happen I've noticed when I over-eat!) and I was trying to sleep in the room without the fan on to help my throat which meant I was tossing and turning with the heat. Including being slightly nervous as I'd heard a cat meowing next to Lauren's tipi the night before and after scaring the life out of her shouting 'Lauren it's there!' we weren't really sure where the cat went.... We searched for a place with English tea that wasn't pappa pippos as we'd spent so much time there but everywhere else just did Lipton so we went back there. I've been drinking royal d's where I can which is a vitamin drink that's good for Vitamin C. We had some breakfast at a different place and then got to our bus stop at 11am which was supposed to be the pickup time. I was sad to be saying goodbye to Otres as it had been like a relaxed couples holiday type place which had picked up my spirits and allowed me to read and have some time to myself again.
I'd already outlined to Lauren my prediction of the timings for the day, which I said would be the bus not getting us until half 11 and then the 12 o'clock ferry being half an hour late and taking longer than the 45 minutes advertised. So the bus turned up to Otres about 11.40 where we sat on it for 10 minutes waiting for a local lady shouting about something. It took us back to the main part, Sihanouk ville, where we then did loads more pickups which didn't seem to be in any relevant orderand everyone had been told they'd be picked up at 11am (how the bus was going to do this all at once is a puzzle). Lauren nearly had a situation of 'death by travellers bags' when she was nearly squashed next to a pile of them illegally packed so the driver wouldn't have been able to see a thing on the bus. And there was ofcourse the whole situation of 'see how many people we can squash on'. The driver thought this was funny though and continued to terrorise us by tugging at my bag pulling me back when I later attempted to step on the ferry. We didn't get to the speed ferry dock (which was in a different place to what we thought it would be) until about 12.45 and then the ferry took about 50 minutes.
We arrived at Koh Rong which was a place a friend from home, Luke, had recommended after he'd lived here for 2 years. Lauren and I had booked a bungalow but didn't realise this was on the other side of the island and would have cost $20 one-way in a water taxi to get to. Upon realising this, we decided to pay the penalty of cancelling the reservation ($15) and find somewhere on the main strip to stay. Right off from the dock the ferry had pulled in at was a bar Luke had said his friend owned and to go see, so we went in there to ask for help on where to stay and connect to wifi to cancel our other booking. Ray Ray was a girl who worked behind the bar and then got us booked in at where we were which was called, 'Bongs', which meant 'Bro'in Cambodian. It was really cheap and included breakfast so we thought it was the easiest option for the next 2 nights. Unfortunately pretty much straight after we had sorted a room, the connection for the whole island went down, which meant not only was there no wifi but also not able to send a txt or call. We sat outside and had a beer while waiting for our beds to be cleaned and had a group of guys from the U.K. sat next to us saying they were attempting to get people together for a boat trip the following day as Bongs were organising it but couldn't do it with just them being a small group. They asked if we wanted go join the 1 o'clock slot which would take you to the two other islands close by (included snorkelling and food) which we had wanted to do anyway so we agreed we'd be around the following day as they headed off somewhere else for food. We then got settled into our room and Lauren and I took a walk up the beach which was as nice as Otres Beach with white sands and clear sea, and took some photos of us on the rocks pretending to be mermaids and then messing around in the water.
Later on we got ready to go out and went and played some cards on our own in a bar and had a drink before being poached by a random guy promoting to join a pub crawl at 8pm. Despite Lauren hating forced fun we decided to join as we both were pretty tired and thought it would be good to pick up our spirits. Now we didn't realise this would be the kind of pub crawl where they would designate you a top to wear, so after arriving and realising this wasn't going to go well over our nice evening dresses we were wearing, we nipped back to the room to get changed before returning to the 'meet up point' bar. We both still felt awkward returning to the bar, Ray Ray was one of the girls running the event so at least we knew her. We had a good night mixing with people and saw the guys (Henry, Moon, Steve, Dan and Craig) who had said about the boat trip the following day. In being in their late twenties we found out they were only on a 2 week holiday and all had gone to University of Warwick so knew of Coventry, but were from London so were having a laugh about the rough ends they had lived in. They kind of reminded me of my friends Ben, Frenchie, James, Ando and Deano who I'd spent a lot of time with back at uni. The people running the crawl had attempted to get people involved in a couple of games but the group generally weren't interested after only conforming to one game of trying to keep your own balloon from being popped which was tied around your ankle (the idea was everyone stamps on each others and tries to keep theirs safe) and the last one left won a drink. It was a good night, I drank a lot of beer and made sure I took a big bottle of water to bed with me to prevent a hangover, although the room was very hot and small and the bed not very comfortable so that wasn't going to help!
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Doreen Thomson Otres beach was stunning ! I was soo jealous ! Once again poor you amongst your badly organised transfers .. Least you are in a. Better place after that ❤️Xxx