Sihanoukville’s beaches

Sihanoukville, known by Cambodians as Kompong Som, is the touristic centre of the Cambodian sea coast.
The city is located on the Kompung Sao bay and it is comprised of 3 islands: Rung, Sanloem and Koun.

The first thing that we noticed in Sihanounoukville is that it is a place with a huge tourist boom. A high amount of hotels, resorts, pubs, travel agencies have all been built in recent years and you can tell that the thing doesn’t finish here. Some virgin areas smell like bricks and cement.... that means money!! WE don’t really know where all this money is going to... if it is going to the sake of everyone or it is just making rich a few.... To be honest it is not the first time that we ask each other this question... some other places in Southeast Asia are the same...we just hope the government of these country is responsible enough and takes care of the well-being of its citizens. Money attracts those starving of power””, overambitious of wealth that drive their luxurious cars along the streets where the poorest are still suffering hunger.... it is quite sad to see such a contrast!

We arrived to Sihanoukville after 6 hours by bus from the Phnom Penh. The arrival was cool as it was pretty sunny.... so after looking for accommodation... guess what we did? we put our bikinis on and run to the beach!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Great!! We missed that!!

Our hostel was beside Serendipity beach... a pretty touristic beach as you can find there lots of restaurants and bungalows along the seaside.



We can’t say that it is a beautiful, clean and quiet beach but you can find there anything that you need! You can rent some hammocks, have a beer for 50 cents, rent a motorbike, enjoy seafood barbeque, get a massage.... and thousand of things more! all that in a beach??:-)





We arrived to Sihanoukville on a Saturday... some local told us that that night there was a Full moon party on Serendipity beach. This kind of parties are quite popular in Thailand... we thought was going to be something similar.... so , after dinner, we decided to go to the party... However, the only thing that we found was a group of very young Cambodians guys dancing local songs along the seashore!!! It was a party... for sure... but not the party that we expected :-) They seemed to be having a brilliant time but we decided to go to bed this time :-)

The next day we rented a moped and we went to visit some of the beaches around the area.



We rented the moped... after a while we even knew how to drive it (it had the gears on the pedal) but.... it started raining sooo much!!!!!!!! ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh we were soaked to the bones but we still wanted to go to the beach.... so we decided to go around Victory beach. This one is a beach close to the harbor and, to be honest, there is nothing special around there.. more bungalows and pubs along the seashore. However, we stopped there for a while to see if the rain stopped.



We were lucky enough and the sun came out again!!! so we took our moped and we went lookiing for the wild beach... and we found it!!! Its name is Otres beach!



Otres beach is a very long beach.... at the very beginning you can see some bungalows and pubs on the seashore but , if you walk a bit more it is a very quite and wild beach with white sand and crystalline water. So we stayed there for a few hours enjoying the sun...



After a few hours we decided to come back to the beach in front of our hostel (Serendipity beach) where we enjoyed an amazing sunset. There it was where we met our new friend... Moshe!!!
Moshe is an amusing character!!! The first impression is that he might be a freaky .... however, after, you realise that it is a person worthy to listen.
Our new friend is 67 years old... long white hair and long white beard... he is an American- Polish retired psychiatric that have lived in Hawai for 18 years. Now he holds a hippy life style and spends his time traveling and telling stories that you would never be tired of listening! Such a laugh!!! He is now working to make a film of his life. He wants to call it “Moises and the 10 commandments”!! Imagine!!

Some of the days that we were in Sihanoukville was raining a lot so we didn’t get to do too much... just relaxing on and reading by the sea.



One of the days... as it was raining again we decided to go to town to see if we found something interesting to do... and we found a very comfy cinema for the rainy days :-) We went in and watched the film “City of Ghosts”... quite a coincidence that it is based on Cambodia.. so it is quite funny to watch a film and see the places and style of life that you are experiencing at the moment.

We just had then one day left so we decided to walk along the beaches and go for a nice seafood lunch... yummy!!!!!!!!!!!



Now we are leaving to the north of Cambodia... we’ll keep you updated!!!

Check some more photos here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26501406@N05/?saved=1