Wed 8 Mar
Back to central bus station for bus to Sihanoukville about 5 hours US$10 pp . We had decided to spend our last few days in Cambodia on the beach for a bit of R n R. We had booked an hotel in Otres 2 Beach area, about 10km south of Sihanoukville. The hotel had organised for a taxi to meet us off the bus and take us to the hotel. Otres is much cleaner than the beaches and resorts surrounding S’ville and they have managed to keep the big resorts out of the area although there is a lot of building happening around – they all seem to be small hotels and guesthouses. There are many shack type places to stay and also hostels with open sided dormitories, lined with beds and mosquito nets! Otres 1 has more of the established beachfront restaurants but they are about 2km away. The White Sea Boutique was one street back from the beach, just a year old so nice and clean with a small pool with a bit of an overgrown jungle of palms around it. We had a lovely big room with 2 Queen beds so lots of space to spread out! US$174 for 4 nts – splurged!  As I am not going to write a daily account of lying on the beach (in the shade!) I will skip to the 12th – but we had a relaxing time here . Long stretch of silicon sand beach ( narrow but very pretty as lined with trees). We ate at the beach bar shacks on the beach – preferred the one called the Bistro (don’t conjure up any illusions). There were quite a few young folk who were here for the party scene. One day we did a 3 island snorkeling trip to Koh Krabey, lunch on Koh Ta Kiev (a couple of beach shack type accommodations here on Long Beach but apparently been leased to French & Chinese so big resorts coming soon! Pity as beautiful beach and surrounds) & Koh Kteach. Snorkeling was not good as the winds had picked up and churned up the sea! We had originally thought of staying on the Island of Koh Rong Sanloem as supposed to be gorgeous but for 4 days decided to stay on the mainland. The bigger island of Koh Rong used to be stunning but now ruined by pollution, sewerage and over development without the infrastructure to support! Too sad. We enjoyed our stay here but showed our age by spending more time in the shade as was way too hot at 36’!