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Published: June 14th 2009
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After a busy couple of days touring round the temples we thought it would be a good idea to spend a couple of days chilling out by the beach before heading to the chaotic capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. Only the south east corner of the country has a coast line and the most famous beach area is Sihanoukville, a port town with several beaches and deserted tropical islands a few miles out to sea. We booked onto a fairly comfortable night bus and managed to sleep most of the 11 hour journey there.
When we arrived at around 7am we booked into the fantastic Beach Road Guesthouse, a brand new place with large clean rooms, hot water, tvs and a lovely cool swimming pool. The guesthouse was actually in the town a few minutes away from the beach but after dumping our bags and having a quick wash we walked down the road to the shore for some breakfast. As it was still very early in the day the beach was virtually deserted so after breakfast we meandered along the 4km beach enjoying the rising heat as the sun burnt slowly through the early morning clouds. After a while
we found a nice spot and sat down to catch some rays.
The beach was lovely but one thing that was rather annoying was the almost constant stream of children trying to sell us things while we sat relaxing. Although the initial reaction is to assume that they are so poor they need to sell things to eat we had received numerous warnings from locals, tourist leaflets and guidebooks to never buy from, or give money to children in Cambodia. Contrary to our assumptions, there are apparantely widespread free schools across the country and by giving money to vending or begging children you are encouraging them to skip school in favour of hassling tourists for money. Once we knew this we were a lot more skeptical and noticed that almost all of the kids we saw were wearing what appeared to be new clothes and nice jewellery! Instead, we saved our money and gave to the far needier adult land mine victims who were begging on the beach as I can imagine finding work in Cambodia with missing limbs is not easy.
After a couple of hours, and a quick dip in the sea, we decided to head
back to the guesthouse before we got too burnt. Once back we had a cooling dip in the pool before getting ready for the evening. Around 6pm we walked back down to the beach to try out the barbeques we had seen being set up earlier and also booked onto a boat trip for the next day with one of the tour operators by the beach. For dinner we chose a nice friendly looking place that had fresh fish from the day's catch in a glass cabinet on the sand. Diane chose barracuda, Amy went for prawns and squid and I decided on barracuda and squid. We sat watching the sun set with a couple of beers while the guys cooked our dinner just inches from the water's edge. Sufficiently stuffed on fresh seafood, rice and beer we waddled back up the beach to bed a few hours later.
The next day we were picked up from our guesthouse somewhat comically in the back of a pickup truck and driven to a restaurant on the beach where we had a free breakfast with two girls who were also on the tour, an lovely Aussie pair called Sarah and Maggie.
After a while we were joined by another Aussie, a guy called Jay and we all chatted for a while before boarding a rather ramshackle boat and setting off to sea. After an hour or so of bumping over the surprisingly vicious waves we arrived at the first island for a spot of snorkelling. However, when we jumped overboard and donned our masks we realised that the water was so murky we couldn't see the bottom, even though it was apparantely only about 2 metres deep. It was a little disappointing but we swam around in the nice warm water for a while before jumping back on the boat to head to the next stop, the most famous island off the coast of Sihanoukville, Koh Russei (Bamboo Island). The sun had come out by this point and as we neared the island it looked gorgeous in the blazing sunshine. Our guide told us that we had two hours to wander around the island before we had to meet on the main beach for a free lunch. We all walked the length of the main beach, watching dozens of tiny crabs scuttling around and checking out the fantastic looking shells that
had washed up on the beach. We even found a couple of oysters and a huge crab lurking beneath them that scuttled off, claws held up menacingly when we disturbed his little hiding place. Crawly critter found, my day was already a roaring success. After a while the five of us decided to walk through the island's small jungle interior to it's second beach on the other side. Rather stupidly some of us had left our flip flops on the boat so we bravely/stupidly decided to walk barefoot. This seemed like a nice idea at first but once we got into the undergrowth and were faced with giant millipedes, enormous red fire ants and huge termites scurrying across the dirt path we weren't so sure. We soldiered on anyway, despite the rather painful occasional bite from a fire ant. Ten minutes later we reached the other side of the island which was almost deserted and sat in the sun watching the waves roll in before having a dip in the sea.
When our time was up we walked back to the main beach through the undergrowth and took our seats at a beach hut for lunch. A couple of
locals barbequed fresh fish in a delicious marinade for us and we tucked in gladly before boarding the boat and heading out to sea again. A little while later we arrived at our third and final stop just off the coast of another island for some more snorkelling. Amy and Diane jumped in for a swim but when they said the water was just as murky as the first stop I decided to stay on the boat and laze in the sun while they splashed about. We then headed back to the mainland and back to our guesthouse for a shower before dinner.
That evening we met up with Jay, Sarah and Maggie and went to a great restaurant in the town. We sat chatting for a few hours with some beers and good food before turning in for the night and catching a bus out to Phnom Penh the next morning.
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jayne
non-member comment
hello again
hello you two and Hi to Diane!!it's really great that you have met up with di. i'm sure she is having a great time. Thankyou for more brilliant informative bloggs. Just excellent. take great care. Mind out for spiders and snakes!!xx mum/jayne