Down South in Sihanoukville

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We boarded a bus bound for Sihanoukville and arrived a short 6hrs later. We discovered on route that the rest-stop food was considerably less palatable than we had experienced in other countries, after Dec got a bowl of something stir-fried with the unusable bits of a chicken.

So on our arrival we headed to Serendipity Beach and hit the sand for some lunch and for a quick paddle. There are loads of free accomodation options in Sihanoukville, which we of course opted for. We got a very small (but completely free!) double in a beachside "resort" called the Frog Shack that thankfully came equipped with a mosquito net and fan. I think the idea is that the guesthouse residents end up eating and drinking a lot in their restaurant and they make their money that way. The restaurant turned out to be lovely so we didn't need too much convincing to do that!

Serendipity is a long but narrow beach lined almost completely with makeshift bars and restaurants. There is only a small strip of sand between the tables in the bars and the ocean, which makes for some very atmospheric meals but isn't brilliant when going for a swim. But the water was gorgeous and clear and really warm and there were loads of colourful little fish swimming around with us, even in the shallow water, so we weren't put off.

We decided to go diving again and booked two dives through Dive Cambodia, that would take us out to the shores of Koh Rong. The dives were fantastic- the best that we've done so far and the lads running the place were great. Our first dive was a reef dive that saw us diving with some pretty big fish, like 2-3ft in length. We also saw a moray eel, some cuttlefish, a huge pufferfish, some nudibranches and loads of small but pretty reef fish. Dive #2 was a muck dive with no reefs in sight. It was amazing though because it gave us the chance to check out some of the smaller and better disguised fish hiding amongst the urchins and rocks on the sea floor, namely sea horses. We saw loads of them and some were as small as my thumb nail. It was brilliant.
We were tempted to stick around and complete our advanced Open Water cert but time was not on our side and we had a lot to see in Cambodia before heading back to Thailand to meet the others, so we decided not to and only stayed in the south for a few days.

Sihanoukville was definitely a nice spot but, it wasn't a patch on Goa and i found the number of street children and beggars very upsetting. There were hoards of children roaming the beach collecting recycleable rubbish and, although they didn't directly bother anybody, it was very sad to see. Some of them were only like 3yrs old and you would see them out until midnight and beyond. Many of them seemed to be really hungry and they would often ask for your left-overs when they saw you had finished eating. There were also many people with disabilities and missing limbs begging and selling small items from table to table. It is distressing because you can only give to so many people and you find yourself saying 'no' to dozens of others throughout the day.

So as nice as the beach was, i was ready to leave when we did.

Oh and I also paid a high price for the accomodation in the long run- my sanity!!
It turned out that the Frog Shack had a bit of a rat problem and on the first two nights rats came into our room and we could hear them crawling all over our stuff!! If was disgusting and drove me demented!! We changed room on the last night and, although it had less rodents, the roof leaked and it rained in the night.... so it was sleepless couple of days!!!

All of the above aside, Serendipity Beach was a nice spot for a few days R&R and we had a really good time down there and are definitely laughing about the rats now in retrospect.
So back up to Phnom Pehn we go to organise our tickets further north to the Rantanakiri Province.

Next stop: Ban Lung.

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Comments

[Kevin Sweeney]

This is savage
Just found this thing! My god u r doin so good to keep this goin! Makes some good reading and I most certainly will be using it in a few months when I make my way in that direction!!!! Also nice work on survuving this long with dicklan