Highs and lows on the Cambodian coast

We arrived to Sihanoukville and found the party town to be clearly in a state of 'the morning after'. We headed to the beach for breakfast to find a row of deserted bars and restaurants looking onto the grey sea and a beach strewn with litter and remnants of last night's takeaways. We had embarked on our 10 hour bus journey full of hopes of beautiful beaches so we were pretty dismayed at this sight. The rest of the town didn't add much to this experience and we do not appear to have a single photo from our day here so it must have been bad!

Fortunately we only had to stay one day in Sihanoukville, whilst sorting out visas for Vietnam, then took the ferry to the nearby island of Koh Rong. Just 45 minutes by boat takes you from this overdeveloped ugly town to a perfect island, with the whitest sand we have ever seen (that squeaks satisfyingly underfoot) and beautiful clear turquoise waters. We instantly felt more relaxed and at home! The island is still quite underdeveloped with only a handful of small hotels along the beach, all offering small basic bungalows backing onto jungle. We stayed at an 'eco resort' there which seems to be a term widely used to sell cold showers, as there is little evidence of anything else 'eco' going on, especially whilst the diesel generator is running. After carrying our wetsuits and masks around for six weeks we went for our first scuba dive and snorkel in South East Asia and saw some interesting new sea creatures.

Returning to the mainland we continued a few hundred kilometres east along the Cambodian coast to Kampot, a small town historically famous for exporting pepper. The nearby Bokor National Park was a holiday resort in the 1940s for the French colonials to go into the hills and escape the humidity of the town. It was deserted during the war and later became one of the main and final strongholds of the Khmer Rouge. With an interesting and varied history we booked a one day tour to explore the highlights. This was an unusual move for us as we usually prefer to find our own way around but for one reason or another we booked it. Possibly one of the worst tours of all time, lowlights included: multiple derelict buildings that just looked like abandoned building sites, a lunch that consisted of plain rice and a waterfall that is currently dry! It did however include a sunset river tour at the end of the day which turned out to be quite nice, Ali was very impressed how the boat captain navigated the river with such perfect timing that our view of the sunset followed the contours of mountain and lasted about half an hour. The best thing about Kampot was the great hostel we stayed in right on the riverside, super cheap and in a great location with a friendly atmosphere, good music and free bicycles.