February 4, 2010 – Day 406 – Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Bussing south to the beach from the less picturesque city of Phnom Penh sounds like a pretty nice endeavor. We were heading to Otres Beach in Sihanoukville, known to be a quiet and relaxing beach. We arrived in a tuk tuk via a dirt and sand covered path with alternating giant rocks and giant holes.

Ahhh.. beer and icecream

From town it was maybe 20 or so minutes to Otres Beach. When we arrived, we found Otres was not so much “quiet” and “realxed” but completely silent and a bit dirty. After checking out several of the bungalows and such, we decided Otres was really just not for us. There are so few people, tourists or locals, in this area that the road was virtually empty. We were incredibly lucky to have been walking along the road only a few minutes when a tuk tuk came by. Otherwise only 1 motorbike had passed us and there was no other traffic in sight–or hearing range!

Serendipity Beach

We bumped and bounced and rattled our internal organs nearly to death on the way back toward town to both hit an ATM (bad planning on our part) and find a new beach. We decided to just park ourselves at the first place we found. It was called Serendipity Beach and it was nice enough, even if overly touristed. If nothing else, that made it very convenient and left many options open for finding cheap food and lodging.