It was illustrated in our boogers and the number of times we had to use eyedrops. There were my feet: they could have been sporting a warm, ruddy tan, until I rubbed them, and once I even made little mud cakes mixing my sweat for a perfect consistency of “lol yuck”. It was the fact that we’d both finally opted for face masks whilst traveling by tuk-tuk. It is dry season in Siem Reap.  These were decidedly the dustiest three days either Dave or I had ever experienced. Sweating at 9pm, we boarded an overnight bus out of Siem Reap to Sinhoukville, where at 7AM our dizzy heads collaborated to transfer to a ferry to Koh Rong Sanloem, where I now write from a white sand beach complete with… waves. There isn’t even shitty pop music coming from anywhere. And the thunder in the distance is as welcome as any sound could be.

The overnight bus was pretty rad, if difficult to sleep on. Here’s a pic of Dave hanging out with a baby hand that kept crashing our party.

At one point I gave the tiny hand a brownie wrapper that the little fingers seemed glad to grab on to. Then I realized it had been a “happy” brownie and quickly snatched it back from the tiny hand, which seemed neither disappointed nor daunted by this exchange; it continued to make guest appearances for a while before its owner probably fell asleep.

“Sleep” would be a generous word to describe what happened for me on this bus. Fitful napping may be more accurate. Truly though, if not for our proximity to a loud driving team and the bucket-plumbing onboard toilet, a happy sleep may have actually occurred. The adventure was there, and I could see the stars. (Dave didn’t quite fit in the cabin so his is probably a different story, which necessarily would involve aggressively snugzing me into a corner to better serve his diagonal lie.)

The rain has arrived on our peaceful beach and nobody is disappointed.