Comically it appears I hit my day’s 300MB limit while posting last night’s update. I went to bed not knowing whether it went online or not.

The next morning I went up for coffee. No breakfast, I’m not getting enough exercise to offset it. My first Cambodians were up there, and they were getting breakfast, five of them, wearing brown uniforms with ‘Police’ written on them.

A sixth had fancier shoulder pads than the others, was slightly older, wasn’t getting breakfast. He was using his mobile phone to photograph one of the ship’s officers, the gentleman with the role that on shore might be best described as Catering Manager. His reaction made me laugh, “No! No photographs. Do not photograph me!”

At this point he seemed to realise he was talking to a senior policeman and added, “My ex might see them!”

My guess is that a criminal records check took place shortly after. I continued to wonder where the dividing line lies between hospitality and bribery.

On deck I put my own camera to use. Fishing boats returning to port, a long breakwater with people living on it, a curious white ship with large pink animals painted on the side.

Shore side the aircraft on a building was amusing but no doubt due to some mundane publicity effort. Far more intriguing was the ship just down the dock using its own derrick to unload from its hold a stream of second hand cars and trucks. Because those don’t stack too well every truck with a flat bed (and a few without) had a car on it. After reaching the dock a forklift would separate car from truck and they’d both be driven off.

A dump truck stood there the whole time, the locals clearly confused by the small van inside, its roof barely visible above the side walls. The forklift wasn’t going to help, so I wondered if they were going to seek help from the ship. I left before the issue was resolved.

There were complimentary shuttle buses out of the port to the centre of the local town. These were small single deck buses, decorated inside with curtains and matching head rests.

The one I boarded pulled away from the ship, circled around and returned to it, not even leaving the port. The driver got off, spoke with one of the local port agents who walked out of sight. A moment later a British member of the ship’s crew boarded the bus and told us it was broken, so we trooped off and got onto the next one. More curtains, a different colour.

The bus ride into the centre of town was misleading. Some nice architecture, clean buildings, an ornate temple. The centre of town had none of this, everything looking run down, much of it looking like it must have started that way.

(Back on board, later, everybody was moaning how dirty it was, all the rubbish in the streets. Fuck them, this is how people live. Deal with it.)

The bus dropped me by the main market, a large busy affair, people and mopeds jostling between the stalls, one clown in a Prius blocking the street so effectively that 40 mopeds were stuck behind him. Through the fish market, live fish nothing unusual but these kept escaping, the aisles treacherous with dirty water and wriggling fish. Nondescript meat and whole chickens, mostly dead and plucked. One crate open and full of chickens, still with feathers, moving sluggishly. One pecked at another, an act of frustration rather than aggression, the recipient lacking the energy to respond or even try and avoid the attack.

The women carried children on their hips, no pushchairs in sight. You can’t easily put a pushchair on a moped. A quarter of the women were in brightly coloured trouser/shirt combinations, the material often red or orange, repeated print patterns all over it, more pyjama than anything. As I left the market again a tour from the cruise entered, old people with a tour badge on, looking overwhelmed by the noise, the smells, the press of people around them. I cruelly laughed, this was the quiet part of the market where you could walk without touching people, see more than ten feet, catch a breath.

Back on the street I fended off yet another tuk tuk (or is it tuktuk?), not wanting to spend $5 to go to the beach. The tuk tuks had two variants, one a carriage attached to a motorbike, more trailer than carriage. The others were pick-up trucks, the open bed in the back fitted with padded car seats, plenty of legroom but no seat belts, a fabric roof offering no protection either.

A walk down the open street, no pavements, stalls lining the edge, constant traffic in jams alongside. More tuk tuk offers, but only as I passed, nobody followed me as they did in Halong Bay. A few turns and I found myself in quiet roads, mostly unpaved, mopeds clustered by the businesses and fences with open gates surrounding large yards for peoples’ houses. Lots of chickens, a couple of dogs, people with pet cats that watched me pass.

The traffic dissipated and I became the curiousity, builders on one of the dozens of construction sites stopping to watch me pass, sharing a joke with each other. I got lost, started to follow the few mopeds I could see, found myself at the back of the market. There were no doors on this side so I circled around it, found a street with an open drain, more locals fascinated that I was just walking down their road.

The Cambodians aren’t as friendly as the Vietnamese but weren’t hostile either. The tuk tuks are the only thing remotely targeting tourists, the shops and market stalls all catering to the local people, all the cafes and restaurants showing only the local language. I was fine with that but it did put me off stopping for a drink or for lunch; no surety on what I’d be ordering and whether I’d want to eat it.

I could have walked up past the market again but cut through it, the stalls outside the building this time, a mass of people and mopeds. I’ve been run over by three different mopeds today, none causing me pain or damage, and caught by the handlebars of a dozen more. Nothing malicious, just no room for me or them. Strangely it was safer crossing the road, just stepping out in front of whatever was passing, most of the traffic going slowly enough to stop or nimble enough to dodge around me.

It was hot but I could handle that. There were no cafes offering options in English but I could have handled that. What drove me back to the ship were the constant horns and other noises, some shops and stalls using large speakers to broadcast bad music or a looped message I couldn’t understand. Too much noise so I returned to the ship.

We’d been promised that unlike the multiple resort towns we’d visited in Vietnam this was far more typical of actual South East Asia, a genuine insight into life in this part of the world. It held few surprises, people mostly using mopeds for transport, a blend of Western and local dress styles, childen semi-naked (and one completely so, but not in the market), every second shop outside the market (and a few stalls inside) selling mobile phones. Some things stood out, including ironically the locals not standing. They squatted down while waiting for a bus, while examining fruit in the market, while working.

In addition to the mopeds there were plenty of other vehicles, small trucks and Hyundai cars all over but also a number of Toyota Prius, all driven as badly as the ones in the UK. Outside some businesses more expensive cars, a Range Rover, a Porsche Cayenne, a Humvee under a car port, a few Lexus SUVs. Those were matched by some of the boats in the harbour, the traditional fishing boats with loud chugging engines parked up near expensive yachts, the sort of boat that costs as much as the houses on my street. All of them.

Back on board the ship another drill for the crew, another ‘Evacuated’ tag on my door. I sat drinking water watching the boats in the harbour, remembering a question from yesterday’s “Ask the Captain”.

“What would happen if there was a tsunami?” someone had asked, a question he hadn’t been anticipating. His answer was that he’d head out to sea, ride it out there; sensible but that would need some warning. It takes time to cast off, there are two gangways onto land at the moment, the channel out of the port may not be clear and if the water receded may not be deep enough. Looking out across the harbour area this wasn’t too hard to get out to deeper water but the houses on the breakwater would be in trouble and the entire port lost.

I suspect we wont get a tsunami.

I’m not sure if I should be feeling guilty for visiting two countries without eating in either of them. Vietnam and Cambodia almost certainly have excellent food but I haven’t found myself near a restaurant, hungry and able to read the menu. Plus I’ve already paid for dinner onboard. I will eat in Thailand and Singapore so I’m not entirely missing out on South East Asian food.

Popped up to the Shuffleboard Challenge on the Sports Deck in the late afternoon. The Assistant Cruise Director did too, and stood there looking lonely as nobody else turned up. I didn’t even give her moral support, pretended I’d gone up to look out over the port, drank some coffee, walked off again.

Instead I gave the Team Trivia Challenge a go. The team of six sat near me came second. Doing the quiz by myself I didn’t do quite so well but did know at least one of the answers they missed.

Dinner this evening was turkey, turkey or turkey. Some American holiday so they decided to ruin it for the rest of us too. I skipped the dining room, skipped the Lido, ate in my room. They deliver chicken quesadillas to your room 18 hours a day and this is the first time I’ve allowed myself the luxury. I deserve a prize for such restraint.

I ordered one: they deliver chocolate cake too.

Tomorrow’s arrival in Thailand is a positively civilised 9am and we don’t leave until the following day so there’s an opportunity to hit the shore and get properly lost. I’m not going to take it, but I may see if I can catch a cheap bus to the nearest city. The cheap bus is $15 if it’s running so not terribly cheap at all really. I think that’s each way too. Better though than the $50 the cruise line would charge, or the $60 to get to Bangkok and back. I’m going to skip Bangkok, I have no desire to bang some. Still, I guess Thailand’s the place for it.

Another trip to Guest Services and another chat with the lovely Dutch lady there. She gave me my passport back, but I think I’ll have to hand it in again tomorrow. As far as I can figure the Thai border control people want to see each passenger with their passport and immigration card. I shall behave, Thailand probably isn’t a good spot to upset the border guards.

After a lazy 2km yesterday I’ve walked over 7 today. I’ll admit I thought I’d done more, Sihanoukville must have been more compact than it seemed. It bodes poorly for tomorrow when it’ll be 5C hotter and 70% more humid. That reminds me, when I get proper ‘net access I’m going to have to research how they determine humidity because if humidity is 80% then it’s 80% of what exactly? Bah.