Sihanoukville

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Sihanoukville is the beach resort in Cambodia. It's a really weird place as well. The beaches are nowhere near as nice as even average beach in Thailand. They are also quite dirty and the waters are polluted. Due to the lack of planning or no planning, the most popular beach, Serendipity is lined with restaurants and bars right on the sand, limiting available sand. Touts are overwhelming. You can't lie 1 minute before someone approaching trying to sell you something. I stayed at the quiet beach, Otres, which is nicer. It's about 3 km from Serendipity, not very developed. In fact, it's quite bizarre as well. There are illegal bungalow places right on the beach, all surrounded by spooky undeveloped land with stone walls around them, ala Kep. Someone snapped up all the beach front real estate, and waiting for something to start development. From the looks of the fences, they've been waiting for a long long time. They might as well be waiting for a miracle, as I can't see package tourists ever coming there to swim in the filthy waters. The road to Otres is terrible as well. It's ringed by construction sites long abandoned. Outside of some adventurous backpackers, I doubt the place will ever rival Thailand as a beach destination.
Now, the place I stayed on Otres was quite nice. It's run by a very colorful family. Kids running around and all. It's like staying in someone's house. I ended up drinking with the owner every night and playing pool with his daughter or brothers every night. That continued for 8 days, with me lying in a humock all day and drinking at night, until I got a mosquito bite on my foot infected. The thing swelled up and I had high fever. I got a moto bike and drove myself to town to see a doctor. The facilities were quite scary, but the doc cleaned my wound, told me to take some antibiotics and send me on my way.
Now, since I couldn't stay in a rustic bungalow with brown water, I moved to a big hotel at Serendipity beach. The place was quite nice, with a pool, TV and WIFI - all I needed to recover, minus the pool since I couldn't wet my foot.
Stayed there for 5 days, recovering. By day 3, I was using the pool 😊 Though I never actually ended up swimming at the beach itself, as I found it really gross.
Sorry for the lack of pictures - I figured I'll take some at the end, but with the foot getting infected it slipped my mind. You are not missing much anyways.
Next stop - Ko Chang, Thailand.

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