Three Days in Sleazeville (Sihanoukville)

We spent three days in Sihanoukville, the Benidorm of Cambodia, where instead of stag parties, the tourists are all old, fat European men with tiny, young Asian girls.

Ochheuteal beach where we stayed is a nightmare; beach hawkers outnumber tourists by about 5 to 1 so the minute you sit down you're bombarded by offers of massage, manicure, pedicure, threading, sun glasses, bracelets, boat trips, and so on. The threading (hair removal) women are the worst "I show you no pay no problem" and they'd start threading my legs whether I liked it or not! If that wasn't bad enough we got a bag stolen on the beach while we were swimming, but fortunately it only contained a dress and a t-shirt.

In contrast, the two beaches on either side of Ochheuteal are lovely; Otres beach to the south is a long quiet beach with up-market resorts and Sokha beach to the north has pure white sand and is hawker free. 

Sokha Beach, Sihanoukville.

We checked into Big Easy Guest House first of all, a buzzy bar with shabby bungalows out back. The food portions in the restaurant were huge, great value for money but we checked out after the first night after a generator kept us up all night making a weird noise like a herd of donkeys! After that we thought we'd got lucky at a really quiet place called Chan Sovannkiry but it turned out to be one of the few hotels in the area that openly allows prostitutes to visit. I was kept up all night once again, this time by the repulsive English man in the next room negotiating and then entertaining his young Cambodian friend. 

It was a Buddhist holiday while we were in Sihanoukville and the beaches filled with Cambodian tourists. In the evening groups of families gathered on the beach to set off hundreds of fire works and light paper lanterns. We sat in the middle of it all and soaked up the atmosphere.

Although we'd planned to stay longer we couldn't take the sleazy atmosphere any longer, not even the $0.50 beers could persuade us to stay! We booked an over night bus to Siem Reap that promised five star luxury: private pods with TVs and wifi. We should have known better! We spent the 12 hour bus ride in a 2ft by 5ft coffin with no lights and the bus didn't even have a toilet on board!