Chasing Amy-Lou

Siem Reap and Kampot, Cambodia:

Before I write about my trip to Angkor Wat on day 30, I’m skipping forward, as I feel I need to share with you the struggles of the last few days, mainly because the taste is still bittersweet and the feelings evoked on days 31 and 32 are still raw; the experiences still fresh in my mind. Plus, at this moment in time, if I took too long to reflect on what happened then I wouldn’t be doing justice to my emotions, and that’s important.

The last few weeks have been an emotional rollercoaster for me. I had to contend with my feelings towards leaving Broome and Australia (neither of which I was ready for); I had to and am still trying to figure out my feelings towards a man I met before I departed – a man who has gotten into my head and my heart in more ways than I wanted…and I have no idea how to deal with it and no idea of his feelings towards me; my feelings towards my inevitable return to England; and of course, my feelings while being on the road, in a foreign land, with no familiar faces or shoulders to cry on should I feel the need for a little bit of emotional support. Which is pretty much every second day.

I’ve tried not to plan too far in advance over the last month and have tried to go with the flow regarding day to day activities and forward travel while out here. Not everything has gone swimmingly and not everything has been peachy keen. But the hardest part about the travelling thing is the rest. I’ve found it difficult to sleep at times, especially with the constant moving around every few days, (the flights, the sleeper buses), the need to always have my wits about me, the currency and financial discrepancies, and of course, the communication. I’ve often found it hard to really relax and get quality time alone and have been fretful about not making the most of my precious time out here.

So that’s why, on day 31, I decided it was for the best to try and slow my pace down and to not put so much pressure on myself and my current situation; and to also try and stop thinking about the other situations that I had no control over (love, life, the future…). After some deliberation I thought it only right to change my course of action and do away with my plans for Myanmar and head straight to Bali instead. My financial situation would’ve only prevented me from truly enjoying my time out there and besides, I needed sunshine. The wet season in South East Asia had hit me harder than I thought it would do and I could feel my mood slipping. I didn’t want to return to the UK a depressed, moaning miserable mess after spending the last two months under a constant rain cloud. I would be spending the foreseeable future under grey skies in the north-west of England so I needed at least a week or two under a shining sun to boost my mood and ensure I returned home refreshed and happy.

So on Saturday morning, Germany and I attended another yoga class, my second yoga class of this trip, a practice that I wanted to and intended to continue with until I was due to fly home (and hopefully long into the future too).

I love yoga. While in Bali a couple of years ago I practiced yoga every day, and I’d never felt stronger (in my mind, my body, and in my soul). However, I was a lot fitter back then and my muscles were used to vigorous and strenuous workouts. At present, in July 2017, they’re not so sculpted. And that morning, I totally ruined my shoulder performing some sort of simple asana…a simple bloody asana. Anyways, I knew it wasn’t too serious (I refused to let myself believe it was); I couldn’t really look over my left shoulder, but I reckoned I’d probably only pulled a muscle, and it was nothing a good massage or a decent night’s kip wouldn’t resolve.

Feeling a little sorry for myself and just wanting to lie down and sleep, Germany and I headed back to the hostel. I had some packing to do as I was leaving for Kampot on a sleeper bus that evening. Initially I hadn’t been too worried about the prospect of another sleeper bus. But now, with a dicky shoulder and rain pelting the ground from every direction, you could say that maybe I wasn’t really relishing the idea.

I’d taken sleeper buses while moving around Vietnam and overall they hadn’t been so bad. They hadn’t induced the best nights sleep, but I’d definitely had worse. So in an attempt to dull my senses somewhat and tire me out enough to get at least three hours kip, I spent the rest of day drinking wine and getting some rest in.

What followed was not what I expected. This particular night bus was possibly one of the worst bus journeys I’ve had in my entire life. If you think using the Megabus in and around the UK is slumming it, with the toilets smelling like festival urinals and the seats not reclining, try taking a sleeper bus in Cambodia – ok, so the beds weren’t that uncomfortable, but the size and positioning of them was a joke: they came in twos or doubles, which meant if you were travelling alone (like I was) you had to share a bed with a complete stranger.

Now, I’m no angel, I’ve shared beds with strangers before (usually after a gin or ten and a little heavy petting on the dance floor), but this had always been through choice. I was not too enthralled therefore to be sharing a bed with a random Cambodian man who had a bad case of B.O. Plus, I’m a 5ft 4″, size 10-12 woman and I found there to not be enough room to swing my little finger, let alone a cat. Any movement would result in unwanted contact with the person led next to me. Personal space was not of the essence on these buses and I shudder to think how any bloke above 5ft 8″ handled travelling on them.

And that’s before I’ve even mentioned the organisation of the ticketing, the confusion about how many changes of bus we had to take before we reached Kampot (turns out two), and the fact we were not informed there’d be a two and a half hour wait in Sihanoukville from 5:30am till 8:00am. It was a complete cluster fuck. And by the time we reached Sihanoukville, after a change in Phnom Penh at 1am, I’d had pretty much zero sleep, was cold, hungry, fed-up, cramped, shoulder and neck hurting, and to top it off, it was raining. Of course, it was bloody raining. My ‘just go with it’ mantra for South East Asia was wearing thin.

By 8:30am, with our bus to Kampot still yet to arrive, and the shed of a hut that we’d been told to wait in stinking because of the disgusting dirt and squalor that was littered around it (the nearest toilet looked like a skip), I was over it. I was over the travelling. I was over the night buses. Over the rain. Over the lack of sleep. I wanted to be back in the sunshine. I wanted to be back in Australia.

I got to Kampot, a wet and frustrated mess, and disappointed because there was no sun, pissed off because I may as well have been back in the UK and genuinely just ready to jump on a plane out of the place. However, once I’d checked into my hostel, had met a really chatty Irish guy (let’s call him Ireland) who seemed like he could be a bit of a wheeler dealer, and a lot of fun (something I needed right now), I felt more at ease. He told me about a place down the road that did a proper British Sunday roast and pint for less than $6. Not caring too much for anything other than sleep and food at that point, and not even being bothered about the price, I showered, changed, hit up The Brass Monkey for my first bit of western food in weeks, and then sat, for the rest of the day, drinking wine with Ireland, chewing the fat of life and generally having a good old craic. And for a while, despite the rain and lack of sun, and despite my need for quality sleep, I managed to let myself go and forgot about everything and everyone else…