The gateway to Cambodia’s islands

We have heard so much about Sihanoukville before. Mostly rather bad. For us it is primarily a place of transit to get to Koh Rong. But as we are, we give the town a chance and stay here for a few days.

First of all: Sihanouville has beautiful places but most of them are extremely tourist oriented, dirty and dominated by alcohol, drugs and gambling. The city is one of the few places in South-East Asia where you really have to be careful not to get robbed or worse things happen.

This travel report is from 2017 and a lot has changed in Sihanoukville in the meantime. Even back then you could feel the influence of the Chinese in the city. In general it was a tourist stronghold, where it almost smelled like rip-off. Today the Chinese are said to have taken over the city completely. If you were there recently and have more recent information, please contact us. We will gladly publish your post or link to your blog. We would also appreciate a comment on how it looks like in Sihanoukville!

How to get to Sihanoukville

Since we are coming from Battambang, we have to take the bus first to Phnom Penh and from there another bus to Sihanoukville. The busses are quite okay, the roads are not! Especially the last part before Sihanoukville is really in bad condition and the drivers are driving like the last executioners.

Bus – the only way to get to Sihanoukville?

Cambodia has only a very small rail network and Sihanoukville is not connected to it. This means that the only option is more or less by bus or minivan.

If you come from the north (Siem Reap or Battambang) you will inevitably drive via Phnom Penh, because north of Sihanoukville there is a huge jungle with a huge mountain range.

Our everyday life

Arriving in Sihanoukville, we are pleased to find that our bus stops less than 200m away from our hostel – how lucky we are!

Our hostel OneStop (or with the new name OneDerz, although it is still marked as OneStop) is well located. Near THE bar/tourist road that leads directly to the beach. Nevertheless the hotel is close by but with enough distance to sleep at night. The rooms are clean and there is a large enough locker for each guest.

We spent the days here in Sihanoukville with nice beach days and long walks. We don’t like the normal tourist program – party hard, sleep hard – that much for this place. The quieter beaches (Otres I & Otres II) next to the very crowded main beach (Serendipity Beach) are perfect for this. Here we meet like-minded people and let the soul dangle.

Our highlights

As we wrote before, we’re actually just passing through here (luckily?!) in Sihanoukville to get to Koh Rong Island. But Koh Rong is definitely a highlight for us. We had a great time there and were able to relax and unwind.

You will find another highlight of ours in Otres. In the small village there is a night market every saturday, the Otres Market. After we read a lot of positive feedback about this market and after we are back from Koh Rong Island in time, we will visit it. Our second hostel in Sihanoukville, the Backpacker Heaven Hostel is located on Victory Hill, so we drive half an hour to Otres Market. The drive is definitely worth it despite the length! Since there are about the same number of market stalls as there are food stalls and in the middle of it there is a big stage with live music, Otres Market has more of an open-air flair for us than it reminds us of an Asian market. It has almost exclusively western people here and somehow the atmosphere drifts a little bit into hippie-like. The atmosphere is great and we feel very comfortable here.

Further on to….

We want to go on to Kampot by bus, which turns out to be Paddy’s personal horror trip. With a 45min delay (which is still somewhat alright) a minivan comes to pick us up instead of a bus and we are the last to be loaded. So this means that we take the worst seats – in the back row where there is no room at all. Even Mimi with the rather short legs has her problems, Paddy doesn’t know where to put his legs. Squeezed between seat and luggage the two hour drive starts, unfortunately on very bad roads with a chauffeur who drives very irresponsibly and moaning passengers, because some of them are sitting in the minivan for four hours for the two hour drive. Well, Cambodia live! Paddy’s conclusion: either take the bus, the train or fly, but certainly not in a minivan again!