On the final leg of our journey, we traveled by road to Sihanoukville, a port town as well as a beach resort on the coast of Southern Cambodia. Named after King Norodom Sihanouk, Sihanoukville is known for its quieter, more laid-back beaches which have still not been taken over by hordes of tourists. This seemed the perfect way to bring our holiday to a close since we wanted to spend some time relaxing and unwinding after all the hectic travelling.
We stayed at the Independence Hotel, a nice hotel attached to Independence beach. It isn’t the prettiest of beaches, but not too bad either. The hotel has its own shuttle service that takes you into town during the day and collects you from specified pick up points in town. The first evening we went into town and had our meal at a small bar (I forgot he name) that had some great pizza.
The next day, we went into town and took a tuk tuk to Otres beach, one of the better beaches of Sihanoukville. Otres beach is not very crowded, nor is it too commercialized and the waters are calm and incredibly blue. We planted ourselves on some beach chairs at a beach-side shack by the name of Chez Paou. We spent a great day on the beach, swimming and then cooling down with some nice cold beer and some good food. We stayed to watch the sun set and then made our way back into town in search of dinner.
The way down to Otres Beach.
Otres Beach.
The shack where we spent the day.
Sunset at the beach.
We settled for the Cool Banana, on Serendipity road, because the nearby Monkey Island bar was too crowded. I think the Cool Banana distinguishes itself from the highly acclaimed Monkey Island because of its more laid-back atmosphere. They show films during the evenings which I found much nicer than the loud music at Monkey Island because it allowed us to have a conversation without having to yell over the music. Aside from this, the food we had was delicious (I had a burger, which I think was one of the best I’ve ever had) and the staff were both helpful and courteous.
The next day we made our way back to Phnom Penh by road. From there we caught a flight to Kuala Lumpur and then onwards to Delhi. I would have liked to spend an additional day at Sihanoukville, because I would have loved to visit Ream National Park, but sadly we just couldn’t fit in an extra day.
[All Images- Shalini Pereira]
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