I went for my first run in 6 weeks this morning coupled with a morning swim I was in heaven. It was warm, the sun was popping out. When I got back from my shower and off to have breakfast, here was my view… And it’s just growing closer and closer and darker a dark. It was nice knowing you all…

I love when you travel the abundance of people you meet who are literally on the exact same wave length as me. It’s very refreshing, this is my thoughts exactly. You don’t HAVE to do anything!

So all three places I had planned to go between finishing volunteering and starting Vietnam have a forecast for the next 4 days beginning tonight of torrential and continual downpours of rain and storms and I’m really not sure what to do or where to go, or if I can even actually get anywhere (they’re expecting 1 meter of rain…!)

Just got super cheap flights from Hanoi to Phuket after spending the entire night researching and Jay just used his grill’d 2012 christmas present. Come the 28th of October Jay and I will be in the same continent, country and town for a week island hoping and lapping the sunshine together and I don’t think I could be more excited.

Every day I walk past this swing and everyday I want to get a photo on it but either I’m the only one on the beach (if that could ever be a bad thing?) or I don’t have my camera. Today I was neither and the girls and I had a field day playing on these.

Ladies walk around with baskets on their head, lapping the beaches with fresh fruit and king prawns. I was so intrigued cause they are the most ginormous things I’ve ever seen. 50cents prawn too cheap not to sample. She cut the top shell off, covered it in this delicious Cambodian pepper mix and generous amounts of lime, and voila! Delicious! I should have taken her up on the 10 for $5 deal cause I later ate the spiciest tom yum soup of my life where I mistook a chilli for a capsicum, eyes watering at the table and heart burn to follow.

Now this is living Barry with the best seats in the house and the best pineapple juice of my life.

The walk home

After seeing a fair bit of rural and real Cambodia here is very different and designed for tourists. It’s great having beach bars and bamboo chairs and all that inbetween, but people won’t get the full idea of Cambodia if they were to just come here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in love with it here, head over heels. Once docked (thank god, the ride home I had to sit facing the horizon the entire time) the two girls said they were going to walk home rather than get a tuk tuk, I was itching to lay down on dry, non-moving land but I thought why not, I hadn’t seen much of this side, we walked the entire length of serendipity beach, past the deck chairs, and abandoned bars, and further on we started seeing where all the sales men, women and children sleep; in hammocks barley covered by traps on the beach further down, i immediately felt awful for them for having to endure the storm last night (and all the others). The further we got down the beach the more polluted it got. And then I discovered why, this village is running directly into the beach on this side. Note the photo the evident line between brown and blue waters. I was thankful our beautiful beach was over and around the headland quiet a deal further up, but it was a real contrast.