What comes into your mind when you think of Cambodia? Is it the World Heritage Site of Angkor Wat or maybe the mass genocide that happened in the 70’s by the Khmer Rouge? Well, it has so much more than that. In this post I'd like to tell you about Sihanoukville - a seaside town featuring Cambodia's best-known beaches.
We spent a month in Sihanoukville when it was the end of the raining season - in October. The rain was dripping for a whole week when we arrived, sometimes turning into a heavier rain and then back. But after that the weather started to get better and showed us some great sandy beaches.
The beaches here are not as crowded as many of those in Thailand, but can be cramped on weekends and holidays. Like many beaches in Southeast Asia, they can also be covered in rubbish.
The main beaches are lined with thatch roofed seafood shacks and bars offering cold drinks, umbrellas and chairs, BBQ and more.
Downtown Sihanoukville, Cambodia. Photo by sihanoukville-cambodia.com
Sihanoukville is not that pretty itself, I didn't even make any photos of it, what a shame! I found this photo on the web and it looks almost as I remember it, except that I remember it with lots of rain and cloudy sky
It's third largest city in Cambodia, its population is around 70.000 people. It's not a small place, and the best way to get around is to rent a motorbike. We really like to just drive around and see what landscapes (this time it was more like seascapes?) we can find.
But when we want to actually swim together and relax on the beach we don't take cameras with us, just take a little bit of money enough to buy gasoline. I heard that while violent crime is rare, purse snatching, pick-pocketing, and petty theft are quite common, so be safe and hold on to your bags!
Have you seen those pictures of freelancers with laptop working at the beach? I think all the freelancers like to show off this way, while it's too hot to work like that of course... But we actually had to do that in Sihanoukville when wifi went down in our guesthouse, because there was free wifi on a beach if you order some drink.
One of my favourite things was to go have cambodian coffee with papaya pancake in the morning. This chocolate smelling coffee is served in the single dripper that goes over the cup, so nice!
The town offers a surprising number and variety of restaurants and bars. And here's the prices that I like 😁
Sihanoukville was the local's go-to place for beach holidays. But then the town was partially destroyed during the civil war and fell into ruins. People stopped visiting it for a long time, but tourism started to grow again in the early 2000s.
The best time to visit is between November and March - this is the dry season in Cambodia, with minimal rain so your beach activities (or passivities? 😁) won't be affected.
Three sides of the town are bordered by tropical beaches. I heard that it's even better to visit some small islands near Sihanoukville, but we didn't have a chance to go there that time.
Sihanoukville is located about 250km away from Phnom Penh, and the distance from Siem Reap to Sihanoukville (the town where everyone stays to vist Angkor) is around 532km (350 miles) by road. It's a nice place to be if you just want to chill and relax by the beach.
Overall, I woudn't want to live here for a long time, this town is too small and underdeveloped for my taste, but it's nice to visit if you travel around Cambodia 😊
All photos taken with Canon 550d 😊
Stay tuned for more!
namun kalau sudah sampai tujuan bagaimana pun itu namun hati tetap senang
Wow, nice pictures, a lot to learn for me, I was in Cambodia too, but too bad that I didn't go to sihanoukville. But enjoyed a lot of your pictures, thank you. Maybe I will go there by myself at some point.
thanks, @annieliu! :D if you go to sihanoukville then try visiting nearby islands and show us photos, it should be great! :D
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STOPI spent a week or so there and on Otres beach in 2015. I remember getting really ill with food poisoning lol. I love Khmer people though. But I know what you mean, the town of Sihanoukville itself isn't that nice. The internet was better on Otres beach. But not so much to do there. :)
the only time I got food poisoning was in laos 😁
I agree, Khmer people are so nice in general!
Looks like an amazing place to hang! I'll have to add it to my list for sure, haha! Got back from Thailand not so long ago and now looking out to explore more of SEA!
As for myself, well, I've just made a new web app for travel bloggers called Steemit Worldmap. It allows travel bloggers to add their posts onto a worldmap. You can see it here: http://www.steemitworldmap.com
If you want to share your posts on the map as well you can find more information on how to do it here: https://steemit.com/travel/@steemitworldmap/steemit-worldmap
Basically you add a sentence including the longitude and latitude value of where the post happened, and the script will do the rest!
wow, that map looks great! I will definitely put my next post in there, thank you! 😃
Yes, it should be awesome once more people start using it! We're still in beta though (some issues that we're looking into and smoothing out)! If you want you can also update your older posts with it!
Alright! By the way, it would be cool if you made it so that if someone typed http://www.steemitworldmap.com/@martibis then it would show your places
At the moment you can use the search author feature for just that! We're also working on making a permanent link (well it's actually already implemented but we'll be announcing it in the next post so shhhht!)
You can try it by: www.steemitworldmap.com?author=yourname
yeah, I saw the search author filter, it's great! just thought that links would be great too 😁 and you did it already! awesome! 😁
oh, can I ask you to do one more thing? 😁
I wanted to add this text "!steemitworldmap 10.6249469 lat 103.5006562 long A Cheap Place to Relax on the Beach in the Country of Khmer D3SCR" in < blockquote >< sub > tags to make it smaller in size, but it doesn't work like that, could you make it work? 😏
Ah, that should work already normally! So I'll definitely take a look into it! Might be a few days though as I have exams coming up!
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STOPNice pic! Is it Sianoukville? )
Thank you! Yes it is :)
Nice post and as always you put some nice work into it
Thank you, @heyitshaas! :)
Free wifi on the beach, haha. What a crazy world we live in. I found you via @heyitshaas. Love your photographs and practical descriptions, I'll be following along for more!
Thank you @therovingreader! :) You make great posts too, followed back ;)
great post and amazing pictures!!
Thank you so much, @nutschiii! :D
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STOPwow absolutely amazing travel post with such beautiful pictures :)
it definitely looks like it is very relaxing there ;)
thank you so much, @reconnectnature! :D It really is relaxing! :)
Nice photos
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Exactly my thoughts! Good example with the sad amputees, I must say!