Sunday 23rd March
I was up at 06.00 and met the guys in their room as Simon was getting the last of his things together. Understandably, he wasn't exactly overjoyed at the prospect of going home, especially after having such a good time in Cambodia. I was very sorry to see him go, and the sight of him in a jumper – as preparation for getting back to the cold and the gloom of London – made me feel even more sorry for him! Maria and I were sad to see him go and we were going to miss him a lot, and he set off in a taxi for the airport at 06.45. Maria and I checked out of the hotel, got a very quick breakfast in one of the bars that never seemed to close, and got picked up from the hotel by a mini-van which brought us to the bus for Sihanoukville.
We left Phnom Penh at 08.00 and the road to Sihanoukville was very good, perhaps the best we had been on in Cambodia. Both of us slept on the way down to the coast and we got to Sihanoukville at about 12.30. We took a motorbike taxi each to the 'Makara Guesthouse' near the beach, got a room for $13, and it seemed like pretty good value.
After we got ourselves together and had some lunch in the guesthouse restaurant (a nice place with a TV and friendly staff), we headed out to see what was going in in Sihanoukville. The town, which used to be called Kampong Som, used to be an important port, and was made famous as the site through which weapons provided by the Soviet Union were smuggled in to be transported to the North Vietnamese Army in the 1970s.
Occheuteal Beach was just across the road from where we were staying, through a row of beach shacks. The place was very busy, with Cambodians enjoying a Sunday afternoon by the coast, and foreigners hanging out in the beachfront bars and restaurants like they did on any day of the week. The beach was narrow and the sand covered in rubbish, and this first impression wasn't a good one at all. There wasn't any comparison to the beaches in Thailand which were usually pristine, at least the ones I had visited. Here, styrofoam packaging and other debris littered the sand and there was a general griminess to the place.
We decided to walk to a quieter place at Sokha Beach, about a twenty minute walk from Occheuteal Beach, and we found it to be much cleaner and less crowded. A large resort was situated behind the sands, but it was still open to the public and it was much more appealing than the first place we had seen (although it too was a bit grubby in places). We found a quiet spot at the end of the beach and relaxed there for a few hours. Sod's Law meant that, for the first time on the Cambodian trip, the sun disappeared behind the clouds and we had to make do with a fairly overcast afternoon. However, it was nice to find somewhere decent to chill out.
We made a move back to the guesthouse, and I was looking forward to the big game between United and Liverpool that evening. Dinner in front of the TV sounded like a perfect way to spend a couple of hours. Unfortunately, the cable connection failed just before the match was due to kick off, and it didn't come right for the rest of the evening, so I ended up missing it. I kept up with the score on the internet until the end of the first half but tiredness got the better of me and I crashed out at 22.00, not knowing what the final score was.
