is Sihanoukville's shy daughter of a beach.
There's not much going on there except for a strip of backpacker bungalows and restaurants. There isn't a nightlife to speak of--unless, of course, you consider drinking wine and beer in a tree house perched at the water's edge while watching thunder storms on the horizon "nightlife." We did when we were there over the holiday weekend.
The holiday in question is the Water Festival, which celebrates two things: the end of the rainy season and the time when the Sap River (Tonle Sap) reverses flow. In years past, this three-day festival is a time when Phnom Penh is inundated with people, Cambodians who come in from the rural provinces to watch boat races along the Tonle Sap and celebrate with friends, family members, and countrymen. Three years ago, however, a bridge collapsed during the festivities, killing over 300 people. Since then, the government has cancelled for one reason or another the formal celebration of the Water Festival here in PP, which drives people (us, for instance) to other places.
We chose Otres Beach because of it's proximity to PP and because it is known and the not-too-known relaxed beach in Sihanoukville, which is more widely popular for it's people-staggering-around-drunk-at-nine a.m. beaches. We were able to avoid these, and Otres proved to be everything we expected.
There really is nothing in Otres except for the spate of establishments that line about a 1/2 mile of beach, so by day, we divided our time between sitting under the palm trees and swimming in the clear blue water. When we were hungry, we ordered slightly over-priced dishes; when we were thirsty, usually around 10:30 a.m., we ordered up some tasty beverage of one sort or another. Sometimes we strolled the beach, but we rarely made it more than 400 or 500 meters from home, and even then it was only to make our way to a different bar/restaurant, a different papa san chair, a different spit of sand. On one occasion, I was actually left the beach--in a kayak to do some snorkeling at a nearby island. (Fortunately, this expedition didn't force me to break my four-day stretch without wearing shoes.)
The evenings blended into the day and were only different in a few regards. One of the biggest changes was that once we snuggled Sila into our bungalow, our enjoyment of beverages increased in both quantity and quality. Most nights we ended up in the aforementioned tree house (conveniently located just outside our room) with five of our good friends. From our vantage, we contemplated the universe, solved the world's political and environmental problems, and told fart jokes.
There's not much going on there except for a strip of backpacker bungalows and restaurants. There isn't a nightlife to speak of--unless, of course, you consider drinking wine and beer in a tree house perched at the water's edge while watching thunder storms on the horizon "nightlife." We did when we were there over the holiday weekend.
The holiday in question is the Water Festival, which celebrates two things: the end of the rainy season and the time when the Sap River (Tonle Sap) reverses flow. In years past, this three-day festival is a time when Phnom Penh is inundated with people, Cambodians who come in from the rural provinces to watch boat races along the Tonle Sap and celebrate with friends, family members, and countrymen. Three years ago, however, a bridge collapsed during the festivities, killing over 300 people. Since then, the government has cancelled for one reason or another the formal celebration of the Water Festival here in PP, which drives people (us, for instance) to other places.
We chose Otres Beach because of it's proximity to PP and because it is known and the not-too-known relaxed beach in Sihanoukville, which is more widely popular for it's people-staggering-around-drunk-at-nine a.m. beaches. We were able to avoid these, and Otres proved to be everything we expected.
There really is nothing in Otres except for the spate of establishments that line about a 1/2 mile of beach, so by day, we divided our time between sitting under the palm trees and swimming in the clear blue water. When we were hungry, we ordered slightly over-priced dishes; when we were thirsty, usually around 10:30 a.m., we ordered up some tasty beverage of one sort or another. Sometimes we strolled the beach, but we rarely made it more than 400 or 500 meters from home, and even then it was only to make our way to a different bar/restaurant, a different papa san chair, a different spit of sand. On one occasion, I was actually left the beach--in a kayak to do some snorkeling at a nearby island. (Fortunately, this expedition didn't force me to break my four-day stretch without wearing shoes.)
The evenings blended into the day and were only different in a few regards. One of the biggest changes was that once we snuggled Sila into our bungalow, our enjoyment of beverages increased in both quantity and quality. Most nights we ended up in the aforementioned tree house (conveniently located just outside our room) with five of our good friends. From our vantage, we contemplated the universe, solved the world's political and environmental problems, and told fart jokes.
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