The road to Sihanoukville is a blue-grey tarmac patchwork with red clay hard shoulders, running Roman-straight through palm-dotted paddyfields. From Phnom Penh it's a four hour bus ride straight south-east, until the tarmac gives way to gravel and swerves south to avoid the mountains that rear up before the coast.

Concrete, corrugated iron, timber and palm fronds are the building materials of choice for the few houses that line the road. Most are built up on stilts in the traditional style, creating a shady open-sided living area under the house. Here, whole families rock in hammocks or lie prostrate on wooden sleeping platforms, whiling away the heat of midday. Their dogs and cows play chicken with the traffic.

Each house has farmland out back and some kind of roadside commercial venture out-front. Everyone's working an angle - mini-diners selling noodles, ice boxes full of fizzy drinks, women selling fresh pineapple and mango, and rows of pepsi bottles filled with petrol for over-ambitious moped riders. This seems to be a very popular trade, but i've yet to see anyone actually stop to fill up their bikes.

The men manning the stalls have an interesting strategy for keeping cool – exposing their bellies to the air by rolling up their t-shirts and tying them at the back. Leathery-faced farmers wearing crop-tops.

Sihanoukville – named after King Sihanouk - is the main beach town on the south coast of Cambodia, but as it's officially off-season now the restaurants and hotels were nearly empty. We checked into a nice hotel a short walk from the beach, with a pool and all of four other people staying there. Empty sun-loungers, empty bar, bored staff playing Beyonce and Rihanna 24/7 (I've only heard Celine Dion once in Cambodia thus far. They still love their ballads over here, but prefer more modern pop versions).

Luckily for us - but not the farmers in crop-tops - the rainy season is the latest it's been for years. Roads are dusty and the fields are parched – slowly turning the dull straw colour of well-worn cricket pitches. We get a few good hours of sunbathing in each morning before the wind kicks up and the clouds turn mean. There's a lot of thunder, but not much rain yet.