Coming home.

After passing out drunk as the plane taxied in Bangkok, I didn't wake until the plane jolted to a touchdown on the tarmac in Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of Brunei, and it must have been mid morning. This was the first of three flights, and three hours completed of a 30 hour journey home. I'd flown in the opposite direction to Europe, but this was the cheapest ticket I could find a week before I wanted to fly, and at only £227 it was a fair bit cheaper than anything else on the websites. Not many people knew I was coming back. Most of my friends in London knew, they know almost everything. One or two people in Peterborough knew. My family I kept it from. I wanted to surprise them if I could. They knew I would be back soon as my money was gone, but I'd told them I wasn't flying back until the 24th, so I'd bought myself a week of time.

I was in between drunk and hungover when I left the plane for a ten hour wait in Brunei's airport. I recognised my surroundings as I'd been here in 2001 on a family holiday. I think that trip was one of the sparks that lit my desire for travel, so it was fitting that I should be passing through at the end of my journey I'd been waiting 10 years to take. I had a mild headache but I was still drunk enough to not really give a shit, so I wandered through the small waiting area and flung myself on a bench, where I must've slept for a couple of hours before deciding I needed a coffee. I had a £20 note in my wallet, which had been refused by everyone in Bangkok to be exchanged on account that it had some stains in the corner of the note. Some money had gone mouldy in my bag when my bag got wet on a Chinese bus. I didn't check on my secret stash very often, so it was in a foul state when I did discover it's condition, and my emergency pounds and dollars took a fair bit of drying and cleaning to get them semi presentable. The woman in Brunei exchanged my money without fuss, and I hauled myself up the stairs to the cafe for a black coffee, egg bagel and bottle of water. I didn't sleep anymore in the airport, but hopped around on the search for accessible wifi and electricity sockets. The ten hours didn't drag and it was soon time to board a flight for Dubai.

I was sober boarding this flight. You can't buy alcohol in Brunei anyhow, not that I would've wanted any, but reality was laid out in front of me in plain, undistorted sight, and it was horrifying. Sat on the plane in a grey, flat dusk, I was pushed back in my seat as the plane raced along the runway, I realised that coming home was the hardest thing I had done on all of my trip. Leaving home wasn't easy. There were things to untie and untangle, things to arrange and postpone, things to think through, but emotionally it was pretty easy. The travel part was easy. You buy a ticket, take the journey, and repeat, until I got to where I wanted to go. Thinking back I can't recall a genuine stressful or scary moment on the road. Sure there are challenges, but they are usually accompanied by adrenaline and excitement rather than worry and dread. When I was travelling, I would be at my most happy when I was literally travelling, I didn't know where I was going, as long as I was going. I was content to be idle, to absorb and gaze, to think and excrete, to chit-chat and encounter. I had nothing to do but to simply be. At home you have everything to do and you have to be someone, be something. Someone people expect things from, and you have to deliver. There were a million things racing through my head, I struggled to decipher my own thoughts through the blizzard in my mind. I was both looking forwards and backwards, and finding it almost incomprehensible to get a handle on the bowl of wriggling maggots my headspace was. I hadn't felt an emotion like this since university ended, and I cried that day in 2006 when I left London, knowing it was all over, and I was close to tears again 30,000 feet over India. I pulled my blanket over my head in case I did cry. I didn't; but I could've howled like the toddler three rows back, or wailed like the infant four rows in front. Would people have tutted at me under their breath like they do with children? Instead I turned my head towards the window and watched orange cities pour like lava fields across the oily black earth as the plane descended into Dubai. 

I struck up a conversation with an English girl about my age as we departed the plane as we had the same bag, I was looking for a distraction and it worked. I only had 30 minutes or so in Dubai to wait, and I boarded the same plane and took the same seat I had just exited, as the Boeing continued on its way to London having refuelled and exchanged some passengers. The food wasn't great on the flight. Normally I enjoy flight food, it's stimulation of some kind, but I didn't have much of  an appetite. I fell asleep before the end of everything I started to watch, and managed a few hours shut eye, before the flight screeched onto the runway of a graveyard grey England at 6.40am Friday 18th January, 2013. 

I was still in shorts and t-shirt, my mind was still abroad, and so I dressed accordingly. Coming through the arrivals gate I looked out of the corner of my eye to see if anyone was waiting for me. I didn't expect there to be anyone, but just in case someone had made an incredible effort, I didn't want it to be a waste for them if I sailed right by onto the Piccadilly Line. There was no one waiting. I was relieved. I bought a bottle of drink for a shocking price, there's no bartering in WH Smith at Heathrow. 

This was the longest I'd been away from the UK, I was a week shy of seven months abroad. My first observations of England were this. It was expensive, it was multicultural, and it was cold. People were tall. I was now short again after 6 months of being amongst the taller ones. Men were different. They weren't lounging on motorcycles or street corners, they were serious. Serious men. Business men. Groomed, but still dying. Sniffling men. Everybody was quiet. Conversations were hushed if they happened at all. I sat with cold air around my bare legs as I waited for the train to depart Terminal 4 towards central London along the Piccadilly Line, a line I'd ridden hundreds of times before. 

On the tube everyone was quiet. It was silence apart from the splutters of coughs, the hum of the electrified rail line, then the familiar female voice announcing to 'please keep away from the doors', before the beep-beep-beep-beep of the closing doors, and we're rattling in to London as the carriage lights blink wearily and the blue-grey light of winter seeps over the earth as if the ground were tissue soaking up cold water. Rows of breathless chimneys stretched out like tombstones in the suburbs and the yellow glow from offices spilt their tricking light and cast shadows across still empty and frosty carparks. 

The train slurred to halts at stations who's names were familiar but still foreign enough that I maybe only knew them from a book or conjured them in a dream. But no, this is London and station after station the Piccadilly Line winds into more familiar and more terrifying territory. The eyes got sadder the further in we went. This journey became a funeral procession, everyone mourning my own loss of travel and idle freedom. The train became busy. People with hollow eyes and double coats shuffled on board, they huddled together with sad arms folded like snakes, floating from the platform onto the carriage in silence, accepting their fate, and once again the beep-beep-beep-beep of the doors before the gentle and breathy growl of steel wheel on rail like the train was cheyne stoking. 

I changed trains at Green Park and boarded the Victoria Line to Highbury and Islington, before taking the overground line to Haggerston, in East London where my friends live. As I waited for the overground train, the last train before I was reunited with familiarity, it started to snow. Cocooned people gave me odd looks as I stood there, with glum face and tired eyes, bushy beard and grubby shorts, as an icy wind whipped white flakes around my face. I was home but I felt lost. Perhaps everyone else did too. 

Bangkok - the end of the road.

I spent five or six days in Bangkok. I did almost nothing of value; unless you count drinking and dancing with girls in nightclubs as things of value. At least none of them had a penis. I think. I spent a lot of my time sat in the lobby of my guesthouse-cum-brothel where I could access wifi, and watch a stream of ladyboy whores and old lady hookers come and go (in real life, not online), some with a handful of different clients within an hour. I was slapped by one of them one night, after his/her fifth waltz past me, I asked 'are you having a good night, fella?' - I know it's not fair to insult people's gender, I don't care what's between anyone's legs anyway (apart from people I'd be romantically interested in), but these ladyboys can be quite aggressive in asserting their...je ne sais quois. The clients ranged from men younger than me, to men my fathers age, and none of them seemed ashamed or embarrassed in the slightest. Many would make quips or throw winks and I'd be delighted at the opportunity to ricochet some back, roused from my tipsy wifi immersions. One man about 40 came down asking to borrow some condoms, 'What, one for you and one for him?'  - I joked, but he smiled back and continued on his search for latex. Bangkok is a city of vice. It's the devil's playground, anything goes and it often does.

Khao San Road is where the majority of backpackers in Bangkok come, and I can't imagine another street in the world which could claim to be the epicentre of backpacking. The entire street, and surrounding blocks, is devoted to travellers. Whether it be guesthouses, bars, restaurants, cafes, clubs, laundrettes, shops selling t shirts or souvenirs, Western chain food outlets, massage parlours, travel agencies, tailors, everything and everything. You can buy degrees on the street and the same person also sells viagra. Fake driving licenses, press cards, you can pretend to be anyone you want to be, and buy anything you want. The place is chaos, it's hell, it's a war, it's enticing. Local vendors wander up and down pointing green lasers at your feet, pinging LED helicopters up in the air, hill tribe women in jester hats try and make money selling these wooden frogs which make a frog-like sound when you scrape their back, or bracelets with offensive phrases woven in to them, such as 'cunt salad' or 'rape my kids'. Barrel-bellied men come in close and offer 'tuk-tuk?' before making ping-pong noises and thrusting a laminated menu of sexual vices under your nose. I never went to a ping-pong show. I'd been to one before, and had no strong desire to return, doubled with the fact I had no money and was living off one or two pounds a day for food, four pounds for accommodation and the rest went on alcohol. The girls who's company I kept were keener to go to the ping-pong than the boys. The road smells like a mixture of street food, engine grease and fornication, with the odd whiff of sewage if you're standing near a drain. On my first evening there Lars and I sat on an alleyway kerb drinking a 7-eleven beer watching a massive rat come and go about his rat business.

My days followed a similar pattern. I went out every night bar one. The days were spent lounging around, browsing the internet, popping out for street food of pad thai about 4pm, but generally avoiding the heat and bustle of the day. The evenings would start with some shop bought beers, before some stronger buckets of booze in a bar, and once we felt drunk enough to tolerate the club, we went to the club, until the alcohol wore off sufficiently that we became bored of dancing to the same music and trying our luck with all of the potential girls.

I was sharing a small double bed with Lars, in a window-less room, it was just a place to crash and hide like a cockroach away from the light. I also spent a fair bit of time with a young Dutch guy called Tim, who had the enthusiasm of an 18 year old, but the beard of a 25 year old. We spent a lot of time that week just chatting in the lobby and waiting for the evening to come. The American girls, Abby and Liv were also in Bangkok, and their company was always appreciated. They were staying with a friend somewhere in the suburbs, but they made a few trips into the central hell and we had some enjoyable evenings tasting what Khao San has to offer, and one evening ending with four of us crammed into our small bed, as they'd overstayed their visas and needed to depart on a border run early in the morning, so stayed with us, though it was so cramped I don't think anyone slept. I slept once they'd left and dreamed of playing football with Darth Vader. Interpret that one, someone.

One evening I met up with a childhood friend, Ben Layton, who was now living in Bangkok with his Canadian wife, the both of them working as teachers in the city. It was good to catch up and despite us barely not having spoken in 15 years, we got on well and I enjoyed his company.

The final evening I took a taxi an hour across town to visit him in his modern apartment, with the intention of dinner, drinks and a swim on his rooftop pool. Everything happened bar dinner, the least important things always get sacrificed first. I'd taken the liberty of also inviting Liv and Abby along to meet them, as Liv was looking for a job teaching in Bangkok and was hoping to stay for a year, so I thought it would be nice to introduce her to some people who are settled in the city and might be able to help her out. I arrived first and had time to chat with Charlotte, Ben's wife, before the girls arrived and we went to the rooftop pool. It was quite exciting for me to be swimming on a rooftop surrounded by skyscrapers, and Ben and I left the girls talking at the table as we did lengths and sank beers. By the time the evening expired, the girls had to leave and I said goodbye to my two American friends as they pulled away in a taxi, and Ben and I went to his local bar. The bar was by far the coolest bar I'd been to in Bangkok, but all of the others had been tourist dives with no class or character. We were almost the only people in there, apart from a couple in one corner who I went over to say hello to with the confidence of beer and whisky already inside me. He turned out to be from York and a reporter for Reuters, he gave me his card and with it a sudden desire to return to Bangkok (or somewhere similar) and work for an international news agency. I'll fire off a few prospective emails and CVs once my website has been redesigned and relaunched. I'll be firing them off into the dark, but like Tony Martin, you never know who you'll hit. That evening in the bar we got pretty drunk, shots were sank rapidly, a generous Thai at the end of the bar kept ordering us sambuccas; the cool bar staff told us he was a Thai celebrity, a singer songwriter who was famous and successful, but I would have no clue if they were pulling our legs or not, but I chose to believe them. Later on we were dancing shirtless on the bar to indie and Brit-pop, as the staff poured Jack Daniels down our throats straight from the bottle. I was pretty steaming by the time closing time came, and my flight home was in three hours, so with help I got a taxi to the airport. I got drunker during the cab ride, even though I'd paused drinking, it was still seeping into my blood. At the airport I met some awful south London sex tourist, who decided to buy me a beer, and we sat outside on the kerb drinking and smoking the last of our cigarettes, before I somehow navigated the obstacle course of an airport, without making too much of a fool of myself or declaring myself too drunk to fly. I had drunken conversations with a host of people throughout the airport, and I think they found me amusing, though I may have just been an annoying drunk. Upon boarding the plane, I walked through business class and asked aloud 'is this business class or the fat cabin?' on the sight of everyone being bloated and swollen with gluttony, or glandular problems, you decide. One woman looked up at me with disdain but I drunkenly and smugly staggered to my seat, where I made a song and dance to the girl next to me about the fact that the seat didn't contain a tv in the back, but just a mirror. I'd never experienced this before, there's been a tv since I can remember flying. I asked if I was meant to perform my own play, and started acting out some scene before passing out against the window, to the relief of the girl in the seat next to me. That's how I left Bangkok and almost seven months on the road.

Siem Reap: Ankor Wat a wonderful place

Ankor Wat at sunrise.

On the bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, I met another American - Mike; he was on holiday from teaching English in northern Thailand and we spent most of the ride talking before sharing a tuk-tuk into Siem Reap town. I was on my way to meet Lars again, who was already a day or two ahead having come straight to Siem Reap after Sihanoukville, rather than detour through the capital like I had done. The tuk-tuk driver didn't know where my guesthouse, Villa Anjuna, was; so I was dropped off close-ish and found it myself on foot down dark alleys, having asked a number of Khmers along the way. I found Lars propped up on the bar and deep in German conversation when I arrived, having walked through a dark garden, guided by the lights of the bar to reach him. I spent five days in Villa Anjuna, and I'm not sure where the time went, as I really only left the security of the compound once in five days to visit Ankor Wat, save one afternoon trip into town to arrange journey onwards to Thailand and to enjoy some bartering in the central market. 

Villa Anjuna was a really comfortable and unusual place, it was quiet and tranquil, only having about five rooms or so, and as such all guests hung out and became a group of one, including Mike who wasn't sleeping there but spent a lot of his time within the walls of the villa. It was a German run place, by a very warm and welcoming couple, who'd whip out the Mekong whiskey at any opportunity, and often they'd pour out shots for breakfast. The social area centred around the bar which was constantly trickling out soft Goa trance from the speakers, and the rest of the compound was a carefully cultivated garden designed for psychedelic stimulation. He was a pharmaceutical psychonaut with wild and enthusiastic eyes, and she was his heroin-thin spaceship passenger. They ran the place marvellously, it oozed hospitality with ease and genuine warmth. The menu for cerebral stimulation was as large as the menu for culinary stimulation, and staying there was an experience I will never forget. The days and nights were spent chatting away with the fellow guests, including a middle aged German couple on their honeymoon, some Scandinavians and a mixture of other nationals who came and went, including the night time expat bar visitors, who mostly seemed to be teachers or journalists, so conversation was always good. 

The psychedelic Villa Anjuna garden.

In the middle of our stay we decided to visit Ankor Wat, which was the purpose of visiting Siem Reap but sometimes you can become distracted. Lars, Mike and I did the trip together, taking a 5am tuk-tuk to the site so we would be there to watch the sunrise. We arrived before there was even really a blue-bleed to the sky, though it wasn't long before the watery hues of dawn began to seep in. As you approach the main entrance to Ankor Wat, having already entered the commercial entrance where you pay $20 for your ticket; there are two small lakes, one on the left and one on the right. The lake on the left already had a small crowd gathered around it bigger than some League Two attendances, whereas the lake on the right only had a handful of people scattered as if picnicking in a park. The choice was obvious. We went and sat on the quiet side and waited for the sun to rise. Having been content with my pictures from a pleasant but unspectacular dawn, we wandered over to the side packed with tourists; DSLRs on auto and compact cameras firing their flashes at a building 250 metres away. Yes I'm a photography snob: deal with it. I took a few pictures of the crowds which by now I found more interesting than the ancient ruins to my left, but we didn't stay with the crowds long before the lure of Ankor Wat was too much to bear and we wandered into the first complex. 

Cambodian dawn.

Bigger than some League Two football attendances - the dawn crowds at Ankor Wat.

Even at the time of writing now, I still don't know too much about Ankor Wat, I've not even gone as far as Wikipedia for research, but you can do that. From what I gather it's around 1000 years old, it started originally as a Hindu religious site, and over time and as influences changed it became a Buddhist site; some of the iconography was changed, others remained, and so it's a mixture of the two Eastern and linked religions. I don't know what society built it, except that the women in the carvings looked Khmer (Cambodian) to me; and judging by the variety in style and decay of the buildings and complexes across the huge site, I would guess they were in use for 500 years or so. This is guess work from my own eye, I can be my own Indiana Jones, perhaps the truth isn't too important; just that the buildings are fascinating, beautiful and intricate. I don't know if they were palaces for Kings or temples for monks, or both, but whatever it was for was clearly deemed very important. I wondered where the ordinary people would have been, as you'd need a city of construction workers and craftsmen to construct such wonders, but I guess the structures they inhabited were temporary. One thing I did notice, and particularly enjoyed considering the way I grew up, was that in many places the floor was littered with pottery. This made me hard. Half the time my eyes were down on the ground looking for any interesting pieces; rims, bases or bits with decoration - just as I had spent countless afternoons as a kid looking for Roman pottery on the fields around where I grew up. This was the evidence of the ordinary people and the occupation of the site. To the untrained eye the ground looked like it was covered in pebbles and gravel, but almost every piece was pot rather than stone, and humble pot at that too. I spent a fair while looking for bits with beauty, and most of it was undecorated and uninteresting, suggesting the  consumption of these objects was by ordinary people, workers, not people who lived in world wonders. 

Mostly pottery under your feet. 

Anyway, our tuk-tuk driver remained with us all day, taking us to about five different temple complexes throughout our visit, until around 4pm when our legs were tired and my interest was waning and I didn't want to become bored by it (we'd been looking at it for nearly 11 hours), so we decided to leave. We had intentions to perhaps come back later in the week, but we never made it. One day was enough, plus it'd be another $20 and my financial tank was already running on fumes only. The complexes we visited all had their own character, with different styles and ages, and you could spend up to an hour walking amongst the various crumbling structures within each complex, and sometimes when we were lucky there were hardly any other tourists about. Although thousands of tourists visit Ankor Wat every day, it's such an enormous site, with structures spread out over such an area that you really need transport to even carve off a small slice of it in one day, and as such you can find yourself at quiet spots to selfishly enjoy it. 

Now for a barrage of pictures.

Thanks for sticking with me.

Lars and I opted to depart Siem Reap at a comfortable time in the morning, nothing too early and severe, as we headed via bus to the border on our way to Bangkok. I'd heard that this border crossing was one of the more testing in the region, simply because of the volume of people and as such there are often queues and delays. I guess it took us an hour or two to exit Cambodia and enter Thailand, it wasn't too bad. By mid afternoon we were officially in Thailand and looking for options to get to Bangkok. We were too late for the last train of the day, so joined one of the minibus runs which dropped us off adjacent to Khao San Road in Bangkok come evening. The following is the last picture I took on my camera of my entire trip. It's of Lars, as we are approaching the Cambodian border exit. I intended to take photos in Thailand too, but I never got around to it, perhaps because it's the only country on my trip I'd visited before, or that I knew my computer and hard drives were absolutely full, I don't know, but my final two blog entries from this trip will be prose only.

The last photo from nearly 7 months of travel - Lars with his luggage.

Christmas in Cambodia: Otres Beach, Sihanoukville.

Sea Garden, Otres Beach, Sihanoukville. 

We'd collectively decided to head to Sihanoukville for Christmas, we wanted to be on the beach and this was the main coastal town in Cambodia. Otres Beach had been recommended to us by someone we'd met along the way, it's a 15 minute tuk-tuk ride from the main town, but as such it's secluded enough to avoid the majority of the hawkers on the beach selling tat or begging for money. Lars was already ahead of us and had managed to book us some bungalows on the beach in a small resort called Sea Garden, which was a relaxed and comfortable place to stay. Alex, James and I arrived on this bus from Phnom Penh and tuk-tuk'd our way to the beach, where I found Lars relaxing on a deck chair on the beach, sat with Cristina from Spain who was now a member of our Christmas group too. I was so happy to be somewhere beautiful for Christmas. The sun was setting as I arrived as I was grinning with little to say as I absorbed my new surroundings and looked forward to a very unfamiliar Christmas.

That evening Liv and Abby would be arriving later on, but we didn't see them until the following morning as we'd wandered down the beach to have an explore of the few quiet bars for a few drinks, and many of them sold cannabis as well, as lax as Cambodia's laws seem to be. 

The following days in the build up to Christmas followed a very similar, lazy and hazy format. We'd sit on the beach for a few hours, chatting, reading or just staring at the ocean, before deciding it was time for a 30 minute swim to cool off in the warm, calm and clear sea. This was pattern that repeated itself over and over for my time on Otres, and it didn't get boring. The company was great, the location was close to idyllic and I was very content in doing very little, having had 6 months hauling my bag around different countries, transit systems and Asian metropolises. 

Lars and Abby relaxing on the beach.

Liv and Abby in the sea.

Views from the shade.

It was a hard life.

Looking down Otres Beach.

We had a couple of nights out on the town. We had to take a tuk-tuk in, but it was better to stay away from the general shit hole of Sihanoukville, and Serendipity Beach in particular which is the typical hell of young backpackers not accustomed to drinking, older sex tourists and a handful of louts. There were only a few bars, blaring out the modern dance remixes that have little appeal, except mass appeal, but I'm not sure who decided this should be the status quo of bar music. One of the bars was half filled with Cambodian prostitutes and older men, which wasn't really our scene, but we danced with some of the prostitutes anyway, for our own amusement. There was a young English guy in there, seemingly on his own, looking about 16 but I guess was 18. He looked like a fetal Mr Bean with milk bottle glasses, and was grinding around the stripping pole and going up behind girls with no fear, and I was encouraging him to hit on the girls I was with, just to watch their faces for my own sick amusement. He was drunk as hell and provided quite a bit of entertainment. The saga of the kid was enhanced the following day when we heard a story, of clearly the same person, from a bartender where we were staying. Apparently he had been riding his motorbike along the beach for some unknown reason when a dog ran out at him, causing him to veer off and ride his bike into the sea to escape. The bartender had helped him retrieve his bike. I heard no more of the kid but I guess he had a pretty interesting experience.

Liv with a bad Santa.

Abby with a coconut.

The days continued on the beach until Christmas Eve arrived, and we spent that evening listening to excellent live music in a beach bar, with the best harmonica playing I have ever heard in my life. He blew that thing like Hendrix on the guitar, and had me mesmerised. We walked down to our bungalows as the almost full moon set over the ocean and the stars burned like candles in the sky. High on life, we stripped to our skin and entered the sea. The luminescent plankton in the water lit up like fireflies as our arms and legs disturbed their suspension, and it was as magical as life can be. I went under water and opened my eyes. Lights streamed around in front of me and swirled like bouncing cigarettes on a night road. The plankton mirrored the shining stars above us, these were our Christmas lights, a real gift and a moment I'll never forget.

Christmas day was as relaxed as any other. We bought some bottles of liquor and drank them as the sun went down, ate a Christmas dinner of fried green vegetables and rice, and prepared for a night on the town. Alex and I had bought everyone a gift when we'd been at the market in Phnom Penh, just a Cambodian pen as a souvenir, but it was nice to have something to give. We wore our Santa hats, and Lars made himself a 'free hugs' sign to wear for the night, which proved very popular and he got everyone he hugged to sign the back of, which was a great memento. We danced away with a host of different tourists, some young Australians throwing up, that sort of thing, before deciding enough was enough and headed back to our beach for another 4am swim under the stars.

Christmas day chilling.

Quiet christmas beaches.

Otres Beach is pretty quiet, just what we wanted.

Lars dances to Chris Malinchak's 'So Good To Me', which had been our anthem of travelling together.

Liv watches the Christmas sun go down.

The girls take their Christmas photos.

Lars Hoffmann, one of the happiest men on the planet.

Sunset leaping.

Liv and Alex.

One of the kids that occasionally came along to try and sell us stuff.

The sun sets on Otres Beach on Christmas Day 2012.

It was a nice sunset, so why not some cliched jumping silhouettes. Liv, Lars and Abby.

Everyone gets involved.

The Christmas Crew - me, Alex, Cristina, Liv, Abby, Lars and James.

Alex getting ready to go out.

Abby and Liv.

Some kind of 70s paedo.

Lars with his sign.

Before leaving the beach for town.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Christmas passed and two days later Abby and Liv left to head to Thailand where they would be spending New Year. Lars, Cristina and I decided to have a break from our beach and went on a boat trip for a day, where we visited three islands, with some spots of snorkelling, which were ok. The visibility was alright, and the variety of coral and fish was alright, but it was nothing spectacular. It was still nice to do, as snorkelling is one of my favourite holiday things to do. We visited a beautiful beach where the sea was tap water clear and we had fun with Lars' waterproof camera taking some underwater shots and enjoying the sea.

Snorkelling.

Lars on the boat.

Lars and Cristina in the sea.

Me, Cristina and Lars.

It was like a swimming pool. 

There was some sea life.

The 28th was the full moon, and as obligatory over Asia parties pop up and here was no different. We decided to head into town for another night of drinking, though I was a little bored of the bars and music by now, it was fun, but not really my scene, and as expected at these beach parties someone stole my flip-flops, so I had to steal some girls two sizes two small to go home in.

The last full moon of 2012 sets over the sea. 

By the time New Years came, it was only Lars and I remaining, Alex, James and Cristina had gone to other parts of Cambodia, fancying a change of scenery. We opted to stay on our own beach, which still had a few bars but were a bit more mature and our scene, and no prostitutes around, just more like-minded people. The main bar, Richies, we didn't arrive at until 11.50, having been drinking our own booze on the porch of our bungalow until taking a late dinner on the beach. The music was a great mix of soul, funk, hip hop and eventually my preferred kind of techno, and we danced on the beach all night until the sun came up, and then when it did we danced ankle deep in the sea until 9am, a perfect way to welcome in the New Year, before finally retiring to bed for some much needed sleep. I didn't get up until almost dusk on January 1st.

Lars leaps in the sea on December 31st.

The final sunset of 2012 - it'd been a great year.

Walking along the beach towards the bar, and fireworks were popping off all around us.

One of the bars on the beach.

A 15 year old Cambodian girl selling joints. No different to London.

Cambodians signing Lars' hug board.

Ritchies Bar New Years Eve party.

Some other weird stuff going on, travellers making balloon animals for the local kids at 1am, I didn't understand why.

My Christmas and New Year in Cambodia had been everything I had hoped for. It had been a fantastic ten days of both relaxation and debauchery, I just wished I could have had some sausages wrapped in bacon, but other than that, I couldn't have asked for more and will be a time I will never forget.