OK, I know biblically it should be “manna from Heaven”, but the appearance last night of Hannah was, to me, nothing short of a miracle. Regular readers will know that for some weeks, I have been in search of the Holy Grail – somewhere to get my hair cut. I have seen many promising places, but on closer inspection have always declined. The one I found here was interesting and one up from those I had seen before in other places. The cold water to wash the hair was actually out of a hose attached to a tap rather than a bucket, but the used water just drained into a bigger bucket… An Asian girl was having hair extensions fixed into her alarmingly red just dyed hair and the smoke that was coming off her hair as the straighteners were applied was something of a concern. And the very common sight here of women “grooming” each other’s heads (polite speak for picking out the nits and lice) – both inside hairdressers and generally when they have a few leisure moments was more than enough to put me off any kind of communal hairbrush… So imagine my delight last night as I got talking to Hannah from Devon who is travelling for 4 months and working for a few weeks whilst she is here in the local dive shop. She is also off to Ko Samui in a couple of weeks where she is meeting her Royal Marine boyfriend and they are getting married at one of the posh resorts. But her real occupation is a hairdresser of 10 years’ experience. Her own hair was lovely and she was travelling with her scissors and hairdryer. So the appointment was made and today I sat out on my terrace having a really good cut and blow dry! I feel human gain. The added bonus is that she was able to confirm that there were no nits in sight. And talking of small creepy things when Amber left, she donated to me an electric rechargeable mozzie bat, so am now an expert at mozzie tennis! Shaped like a small tennis racquet, it has electric filaments instead of the usual strings and as you wave it around in the air, any insect that comes into contact with it gets immediately fried with a lightening blue flash. Really quite satisfying and they appear to be a bit of a craze over here. I first saw them in Siem Reap, and now the whole country seems to use them, so much better for the environment. But it has changed the sights and sounds of the night. Instead of the gentle sounds of geeko’s and frogs, all you can hear and see are the lightning flashes as more and more insects get zapped. See attached pic “anyone for tennis?”. This morning I took a walk along the beach again, a bit quieter as now it’s Monday. But I saw the guy going out to catch fish for lunch – the sea must be plentiful as he just takes out a bucket with holes in the bottom and seems to sweep them up. How fresh, I thought – but then realised that he was very near the shore and very near a rather brown stream of cloudy unidentifiable water that was meandering its way into the sea just where he was landing his catch (see pic). No wonder people report in sick after eating beach food – I understand all the washing up is done in the same seawater, which I guess also contains other interesting items from the thousands of swimmers and boats in there every day…. So tonight is my last night this time in Sihanoukville and I have really enjoyed it. It's been very relaxed, I have met some really interesting people (including the Brit pimp who was here tonight). I have celebrated by having fish and chips with real malt vinegar at the bar (on the house!) and a couple of glasses of good wine. Sihanoukville may not be everyone's taste, very backpackery, lots of rubbish and a lot of building but there is something about the place which is really endearing. I just hope it hasn't changed too much when I come back next year.
