Southern Cambodia – Sihanoukville & Kampot

After Phnom Penh, we decided to head down to the southern coast of Cambodia as we'd heard there are some lovely islands and beaches down there. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of rainy season, and when we got there, there were heavy monsoons. We checked into our first hotel in Sihanoukville and it was way below the standard we had become used to over the past 2 months in S.E Asia – no free soap or shampoo, no complimentary water! It wasn't that bad, it was actually the biggest room we've ever stayed in, but it just felt a bit creepy (high ceilings – they always creep me out). We didn't like the feel of the place. 

Biggest does not always mean best

That night, I wanted to ring my mum for her birthday but the internet didn't work in the room (sods law, the only hotel we've had in Asia where the internet doesn't work), so I went down to the reception to use it there, waiting until midnight to ring home. Then at 10pm, the woman started to turn off all the lights and shut the shutters on the front of the guest house and said they were turning off the internet and couldn't leave it on in case it burned. Despite our pleading, they wouldn’t change their minds, so we had to go to the bar across the road to use the internet there. When we came back to the hotel around midnight, we were locked out! We couldn't get back in. We had to go round a dodgy dark alley around the back and hammer the back door down. I could see a girl sitting in the room behind the door just looking at us. Eventually, when I shouted 'hello!' loudly several times, she finally let us in. The next day we checked out. The towels were dirty and there had been a hole in the bathroom ceiling. We didn't want to stay another night. Instead, we checked into a luxurious hotel down the road that is probably the nicest we have stayed in! The bathroom had a bath and a window onto the bedroom and it had a lovely pool. We went for a walk along the beach and it had a hippyish vibe to it, with lots of old Western men and young Cambodian women there together. The beach also felt very dirty, with litter everywhere, and we didn't trust any of the restaurants not to give us food poisoning so we ended up going back to our hotel and ate at the more pricey restaurant across the road which was lovely. 

New room, new pool :)

We shared a bottle of Malbec together and it reminded us of Argentina. We decided to treat ourselves to the wine, a nice meal and dessert because there was nothing else to do there. Food in Cambodia is quite a bit more pricey than the other countries because they use the US dollar as their currency, so everything is $1, which sounds cheap, but that's about 60p for a coke, whereas in Thailand it would be 30p, so Cambodia is double the price for many things, still not expensive though.

The next day we checked out and took a bus to Kampot, a town the Lonely Planet describes as a 'quaint little French colonial town'. On the minibus on the way there, we were discussing how, despite having done a round the world trip, we didn't feel like true travellers because we'd never travelled on a bus with live chickens before (something many travellers report as a norm). We ate our words a few minutes later, not because someone with live chickens got on, but because the bus stopped to pick up every man and his dog (bus built for 13 people, ended up holding 26) and we were travelling with live crabs stuffed between our legs. The bus stopped every 5 minutes to pick up some package or another (sea food etc), which had to be wedged in between our legs and made the journey go really slowly.

Kampot

Eventually we got to Kampot and a tuk tuk driver approached us with a sign asking us to stay in his hotel. As we had nowhere booked, we went with him and ended up in an average place (this time with free toiletries), but again, the weather was terrible, so what everyone had described to us as being a lovely coastal down, just looked miserable. Our hotel was on the bank of a river, where people supposedly go swimming in summer, but we just had to make do with borrowing an umbrella and walking into town. Luckily, we happened upon a lovely cafe, where they made Swiss hot chocolates and where the staff were really friendly and wanted to practice their French on us. We ended up hanging out there for a bit and then went back there afterwards for tea (fish and chips). In the end, we both decided we liked Kampot, despite the rain.

Restaurant we ate at - I liked the deco!