Otres Beach & Koh Rong Samloem
I’m putting the next two places into the same blog, simply
because I can only write: ‘We lay in the sun all day’ once or twice before
everyone starts sending me abuse on Facebook, Twitter and Blogger. So forgive
me and I hope you’re all enjoying the snow J.
Otres Beach is a very small beach resort (who’d have thought
it?) on the southwest coast of Cambodia, near the larger town of Sihanoukville.
All of Otres’ bars and restaurants are based around the strip of beach which
runs around 1km long, meaning there is very little to do but eat (BBQ Seafood),
drink and sunbathe. This was exactly what we needed after the travails of Phnom
Penh and the city life of HCMC. For several days in a row, we sat and drank
cocktails, whilst watching the sunset over the horizon, truly appreciating how
lucky we were to be there.
Every Saturday evening in Otres they run a market,
surprisingly called ‘Otres Market’, which is a few stalls of food and
knick-knacks, gathered around a bar where people congregate, drink and listen
to music performed by locals, travellers and ex-pats. On our return to Otres
after Koh Rong Samloem (more on this shortly), we were treated to the wonderful
show of a man trying to set himself on fire whilst dancing to the sounds of a didgeridoo.
So, after several days of lying around on a beach, we set
off early (7am) one morning to catch a dive boat to Koh Rong Samloem, a very
small island off the coast of Cambodia, next to its more famous twin island ‘Koh
Rong’. The (very choppy) journey took around 2 ½ hours but thankfully our walk
from the pier to our hut was a very short one across the beautifully soft white
sands. Our accommodation at ‘Robinson’s Bungalows’ was positioned right on the
beach on the west of the island, with its back against the jungle that
separated us from the eastern side.
Now, when I describe our accommodation as a ‘hut’ I am not
exaggerating or underplaying what it was. It was a hut, with a balcony and two
hammocks. It had a gap of about a metre from the top of the hut to the roof,
which was exactly where a bat decided to fly into the room on the first evening,
scaring the bejesus out of Jane in the process. As well as the bat, we had a
pet lizard (called Lizzie) who would make an appearance from time to time in
the corner of the room. We lived off of generator power in the evenings, which
meant that the walk from our hut to the restaurant/reception area required a
flashlight, otherwise it was total darkness and the generator went out about
11pm. Unfortunately on the first evening, I was suffering from some pretty bad
sunstroke and spent the evening either sweating (no fan & no A/C) or
freezing cold and totally unable to sleep. As was Jane, who spent the entire
evening worrying that I might need to be airlifted to hospital at some point.
Thankfully, I felt a lot better the following day and we
spent the next few days relaxing and swimming in the sea with only a handful of
other people around. We also walked through the jungle to the other side of the
island, which took around 45 minutes each way and was a great experience (in
hindsight obviously).
Along came December 25th and we had a wonderful Christmas
dinner of BBQ meats and seafood, and I have to say that all of the food we had
at Robinson’s was absolutely delicious, including the best Chicken nuggets
ever! (I’m not even sorry McDonald’s), however I could have absolutely
destroyed a Christmas dinner. Nonetheless, it was worth it just to be there.
No comments:
Post a Comment