Sihanoukville, Cambodia - 30 December, 2006 to 8 January 2007
Again our lack of advance planning left us wondering where we would sleep when there didn’t seem to be any rooms available on our arrival to Sihanoukville. The list of possible hotels that J prepared before our arrival was decimated as call after call turned up an “all full” response. We finally found a hotel, The Seabreeze that was available on Independence Beach, recently renamed to 7 Chann Beach. We soon found this was the only accommodation in that area, and there was nothing else around in walking distance. The beach was populated mostly by locals, and was much quieter than the main tourist beaches of Serendipity and Occheuteal just to the east. The hotel consisted of huge but outdated rooms, and would be a beautiful location with some modernization.
After the first night we decided the Seabreeze wasn’t where we wanted to be, so D set out on a walk down the beach for another hotel. It was on this walk that D found a stranded fisherman and his son who were trying to get his large and heavy boat out of a small channel and into water deep enough to float it. They were unable to do it alone, so D managed to persuade a dozen or so locals up the beach to come and help. It was here she learned to say “one, two, three, push” in Cambodian. At least she thinks she learned this, but from the laughter of the locals, it is doubtful she was very close to the correct pronunciation.
On this walk, D also found the Sokha resort which just happens to be on Sokha beach, a private beach open to the resorts guests only. The rooms started at $110 per night (about six months wages for the average Cambodian), and because it was New Years Eve they had a mandatory dinner thrown in for another $60. Instead, we celebrated New Years Eve at the Seabreeze’s recently opened restaurant with a dinner of Asian food and a bottle of French wine (yes, this was the only wine available that day and J choked on it).
On New Years day we moved to another hotel, the Golden Castle, almost on the Golden Lions roundabout, and very close to Serendipity and Occheuteal beaches. There are also a large number of restaurants, bars, and shops in this area, so we had many more options for eating and entertainment. After two nights there we decided the hotel seemed a bit stuffy and we didn’t like the staff’s attitude, so we moved again to a new hotel called the Reef Resort which was only a couple hundred yards away between the Golden Lions roundabout and Serendipity beach. This is where we finally settled in for the remainder of or rest and relaxation in Sihanoukville.
There is really not much to tell about our visit to Sihanoukville except our time was mostly spent on R&R either at the beach, the hotel pool, or the Monkey Republic. The MR is a guesthouse and bar owned by some Cambridgeshire folks and is just a couple of doors up from the Reef Resort. It is frequented by many western backpackers, so it was a convenient hang out for us to meet others on the Southeast Asia trail. The price of drinks is also a draw, so we had a few jugs of beer and a couple of Monkey Brains (the drink), Chocolate Chimps, and of course a Jagermeister to toast the old Concordia women’s soccer team. Backpacking Asia isn’t as bad as we expected after all!
One day we decided to rent a motorcycle and tour around town. The 125 cc Honda Dream seems to be the bike of choice for most of the motodup drivers and you can rent them yourself for about $4 a day. In the end it was too many years since J drove a bike, and between the other motorbikes, crazy 4 wheelers, cows, and tourists on the road, we decided this wasn’t a good place to practice and chickened out.
We did do a day trip to Ream National Park which we would not recommend for anyone else. It consisted of a 45 minute minibus ride to the park, a 1 ½ hour boat ride down the river to the Gulf of Thailand, a 45 minute swim on a beach where the river met the Gulf, a 45 minute route march through the jungle to a fishing village on the river with no time to stop and take pictures, a quick visit to a school to demonstrate how poor the families were and how they needed money for clothes and books, a lunch at the boat dock, and finally a 1 ½ hour boat ride back to the park entrance for the minibus ride back to town. The highlight of the day was a few sea eagles and a couple of dolphins spotted during the boat ride down the river, and the BBQ fish lunch served in the fishing village.
We finally decided we had rested enough, yet again, and should move on. We decided instead of seeing Phnom Penh first and Siem Reap second, we would pass through Phnom Penh only as a transfer point to Siem Reap, then return later on our way to Vietnam as all border crossings into Vietnam from Cambodia are in the south and we would have to come back that way regardless. That decided, we booked our bus ticket on the local bus from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh for 8 January, then our onward journey to Siem Reap for the 9th. We wanted to break up the trip as it was approximately 4 hours from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh, and 6 hours from Phnom Penh, and as we were finding, estimated travel times are best case scenarios (which really don’t exist in Cambodia) and should be used only as very loose guidelines.
Next stop Siem Reap, after an overnight layover in Phnom Penh.
