A week at the beach

I spent the last 6 days on the southern coast of Cambodia not doing a whole lot of anything. It was nice to just stay in one place for a while. This is the first time in a month that I´ve stayed put for more than two or three days.

From Siem Reap I went directly to Sihanoukville by bus and was here 4 nights. Its a good-sized place so I´d imagine it gets real busy during toursist season. While I was there things were relatively quiet, all the hotels and restaurants were barginaning hard to get some business. Found a quiet beach on the north side of town and didn´t really stray too far from the water. And the water here is hot! It felt close to 90 degrees, ok maybe I´m a little jaded from the Oregon coast, but this is probably the warmest ocean I´ve ever swam in!

Later in the week I took a short bus ride to a place called Kep. This little town is within 20 km of the Vietnam border and hasn`t really been developed for tourism yet. Throughout the early 20th century it was a popular vacation spot for the French and Khmer people. During the 1970`s the Khmer Rouge came through and burned down all these mansions and vacation homes (see picture). These blackened out concrete shells are still there to see and it looked like many currently have squatters living inside. I also hiked up a hill to see the vacant palace that King Sihanouk had as a vacation home. There was no one else around so I walked inside to look around. It was probably a really nice place at one time, but it just felt sorta creepy walking around in there.

Took a boat ride from Kep to a quiet island just off the coast. It was real small and there was only a handful of bungalows to stay in but everything was dirt-cheap...I walked around the island and found a couple fishing villages but for the most part it was uninhabitated. It´s a really nice place with great beaches, but I heard the island has been sold for development much like a lot of the islands off of Cambodia.

Today I took a bus up to Phnom Penh. I really haven´t seen much of the city and I probably won´t as my flight for Bangkok leaves tomorrow. Just another busy place as far as I can tell...Well I think that is all, I may try putting up more photos once I´m in Bangkok