Day 11 : Sihanoukville

We made it to Sihanoukville, the Coast. A town with many small beaches, a lot like Goa (India) only even more chill - at least where we stayed. Otres Beach, our choice out of the 7 beaches to choose from, is the most laid back hangout during the day and dark and quiet at night.  If you don't have a headlamp, you will surely be run over by a TukTuk - also having no headlights. The main beaches, pumping the base until the wee hours of the morning, are more crowded and a little dirtier with trash - it is the third world remember - so Otres is the winner.

This part of the country is heavy with backpackers along with wealthy Europeans and Russians sprinkled in - and of Course Cambodians - it makes for an interesting dynamic. We rolled in on a Sunday, so needless to say many of the smaller bungalows on Otres Beach were full. So we took the first place we found - that had 2 rooms available - The Done Right Geo-pods.

Good Ole G5 was SUPPOSE to be our dwelling for the next 3 nights.... stress on the word SUPPOSED to. "Done Right" done did us wrong! First of all the place is run by a bunch of Euro guys who, although are super nice, run their place like a Fraternity of aging Punk band retirees who just want to hang out with their buddies all day....which I guess "is what it is". And Good old G5 we inherited from OO because ours had a poodle sized spider living on it - and Marisha don't play-that. It had no Ac, no ventilation, was an ant colony, had a not so clean bathroom and was hotter than a concrete pizza oven. So when Brian and I both proceeded to get mild food poisoning, by breaking a cardinal Travel Rule of ours, good old G5 was not-so-good anymore. 

Here is our review from Travelpod: 

Done Right - Otres Beach, Sihanoukville, Cambodia

I rated this place 2/5 - Done Right

I never want to bash a place that offers safe lodging away from home but Done right could change a few things and really have an awesome place going. Run bu very friendly Brits, they are however guys....and our pod was NOT clean. The sheets were dirty, the bathrooms gross and dirty. The grounds are a mess and it looks liek a dump site. The place is so cool looking it wouldnt take much to get it looking great. Yes, they are in Cambodia, and Cambodians pile trash up everywhere, but make an example and clean up your site. The pods could use a good cleaning and the trash is just thrown behind them..its sad. It doesnt take much to keep a place nice. Clean is all we ask when we are traveling. No AC is fine, the fans work well. The pods a are fun and the guys running it are nice as well. The food is good and they offer a great pig roast once a week. Maybe they need a girl on staff to keep them in order. Clean up every day, remove all the debris around the grounds, hide the trash or burn it, clean the leaves and crap off the pod skylights, clean the bathrrosm with a good scrub down now and again or repaint to keep them clean.

Khmer Village Otres Beach - N0 6 District Sangkat 4, Khan Meta Pheap, Otres Beach , Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Sunshine Beach Hotel - Victory Beach, Sihanoukville, Cambodia

FYI Travel Rule #1: Only eat street food that is cooked in front of you. We broke it by eating dodgy seafood off a tray that had been in the blistering sun and heat all day by a woman peddling it on the beach. In not-so-good-old G5, the bathroom smelled, the water smelled and if you have ever had food poisoning...everything smelled. Before the old, hot, sun-soaked, bacteria marinated seafood poisoning kicked in we had hit Done Right's beach bar called "Blame Canada" where we ate the beach sea food, drank way too much and followed it all up with a $4 PigRoast that, also, had been marinating in the sun and heat and humidity all day. Add all those ingredients together and you get Body aches and cold sweats around 2 am.

The next morning we had plans to go diving on Koh Rung but of course that wasn't happening and OO went alone 🙁 Guess what we did first.... find a new pad - complete with big clean bathroom, hot water and Ac...and get this...it was 2 doors down. If we had checked it the night before... They had 2 rooms available - but what kind of story would that make. Here is our review from Travelpod:

Wish You Were Here... Guesthouse & Bar - Sangkat 4, Sihanoukville, Cambodia

I rated this place 4/5 - Otres beach Guesthouse

A welcome treat of AC after roasting on the beach. If you ever splurge a tad more for a room, we suggest anyplace that has AC at Otres beach!

Luckily we had an extra day - so Scuba Diving did actually happen for us. There are some highly rated dive sights in Cambodia - most being a long boat ride out it o the clustered islands off the Cambodian coast. Its a 3 day commitment - so we opted for the closest dive sites to S-ville. We had some severely ghetto dive gear: Here was our rating from Travelpod:

 The Dive Shop Cambodia - Serendipity Beach Road, Sihanoukville, CambodiaI rated this place 2/5 - Dive Shop Cambodia. The dive itself was pretty cool as far as new plantlife and coral to see. The staff is super young and seem more interested in hanging out with each other that offering info on the area or talking to the divers. The best Dive Masters teach you about the area you are about to dive in in more than 5 minutes and are interested in making you a better diver - in other words they care. The gear is beyone ghetto, but i guess if the regulator works, that is all that matters.