Sihanoukville, Cambodia: Paradise or Polluted Kip?

Arrival in Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Even the paradise of Lonely Beach couldn’t convince us to stay in one place very long. We have a friend who recently moved to Sihanoukville, so we decided to take a mini van there from Koh Chang. There is nothing I can write about the border scams in Cambodia that hasn’t already been written before. Fortunately, we were well informed and only had to pay the $1 “health certificate fee” and an extra $2 on our visa but they tried every trick in the book.

The dirt roads near the border were bad. The recent rains had created holes in the road large enough to swallow a motorcycle but other than that, the trip from the border wasn’t too bad. We stopped once for drinks and snacks and I discovered that chili powder on pineapple is delicious.

The sun had set by the time we arrived in Sihanoukville last night. Tuk Tuk drivers swarmed the bus before it had even fully stopped and began grabbing for suitcases and backbacks. We weren’t quite sure how far the bus station was from the center of town but we knew our hotel was on the Golden Lion Circle so I was sure we would at least recognise that landmark when we passed it. That didn’t stop the driver from trying to get us to go to a different guesthouse. At one point he stopped the tuk tuk near the circle and started arguing with us but luckily I looked across the road saw the sign for the Panda Guesthouse and we got out there. He charged us $5 which I later learned was too much and then tried to collect a commission from the guesthouse owner which didn’t work since we had booked online.

The owner of the guesthouse upgraded us to a better room. The WIFI didn’t work in our room but it worked fine on the terrace down the hall and in the bar downstairs.

We were starving so we asked the owner for a recommendation on where to eat. He suggested an Italian restaurant that had just opened down the street and we decided to go for it since we were too tired to really explore the town. The side street he sent us down was dark and we weren’t sure how much farther the restaurant was. I started to get nervous and then we saw a shadowy figure headed straight for us. We decided to head back towards the main street and noticed that the person was following us. I was really starting to worry when I heard a familiar voice calling our names. Yes, it was our friend Tristan that we had come to visit. It turned out that he was working in a bar next door to the Italian restaurant and had seen us walk past.

We stayed at the bar for a couple of hours and had some fantastic food from the restaurant next door, which is run by two expats. Tristan filled us in on all the best places to go in Sihanoukville and what scams to watch out for.

Now it is early afternoon and I’m sitting in a coffee shop with the best coffee and icy air conditioning. The WIFI in this cafe is fantastic and the menu is filled with tempting ice cream drinks. I might sit here until the day cools off a bit.

Paradise or Polluted Kip?

We had been planning on staying in Sihanoukville for at least two weeks. I had hoped to stay long enough to really get some work done on this blog. For years, people had been recommending Sihanoukville to me for its low cost and beautiful beaches. Sadly, we found more pollution than paradise.

First, let me say that Sihanoukville does have a lot of potential. It is very cheap and theoretically would be a great place to stay for a few months if you are working online. Also, we did not explore all the beaches and I am told that Otres beach is much better than the ones we went to. We were travelling on a budget and your experience is likely to be very different from ours if you are staying in one of the luxury hotels and are not swimming at the beach or eating street food.

Update: This post has been updated with more photos from our visit in October 2016.

The Food

Normally, I am an adventurous eater. I love street food and finding small, local restaurants. An incident on Serendipity Beach changed that. All along the beach, you will encounter Khmer women with small grills selling shrimp and other seafood which looked great. I was just about to buy something when I noticed one of the women washing utensils in a dirty puddle on the sidewalk. Now, it’s not like there was no clean water available. I saw more than one public restroom behind the beach bars that presumably had cleaner water in the sinks. Maybe it was just that one vendor that had no sense of hygiene, but it really put me off of having anything from a street vendor.

Most of the restaurants we tried were pretty dismal. The only stand out was Slumdog Curry. This is a vegetarian and seafood Indian restaurant that we loved. The vegetarian thali in the photo above was only $2.00 and was fantastic. We quickly decided to have most of our meals there. Yeah, yeah, I know that we should be trying Khmer food but I’m not feeling well and I don’t need food poisoning to add to it.

I also recommend the food at Monkey Republic Hostel.

Serendipity and Ochheuteal Beaches

The tuk tuk drivers on the road to Serendipity Beach are rude and quite aggressive. It is a short walk from Golden Lion Circle to the beach, I don’t need a tuk tuk! One of the angry drivers told me I should go home if I didn’t want to spend money in Cambodia. Look, I don’t care about spending $1 on a tuk tuk ride, it just wasn’t far enough to need one.

The beach is filled with small children demanding that you buy a bracelet from them or women selling foot massages. If you turn them down, they will curse at you.

Update: This had improved when we visited in 2016. Either all the really rude tuk tuk drivers quit or else they decided to improve their sales technique. You will get tired of hearing them say, “tuk tuk, tuk tuk?” every five feet you walk down Serendipity Beach road.

From a distance, the water looked inviting. When I got closer, I could see that there was trash floating everywhere. We decided against swimming. I have no idea where the water from that drainage pipe in the above photo comes from. Is it runoff from the street? Grey water from the bathroom sinks? Either way, it did not make the beach any more appealing.

 

 

Why is Sihanoukville so dirty?

 

1. As far as I know, there are still no recycling facilities in Cambodia. In 2014, the Minister of Environment called for a recycling plant to be built in Sihanoukville but it doesn’t look like that happened. Street pickers in Phnom Penh will collect more valuable recyclables, such as metal, and sell them to middlemen who sell them on to Thailand and Vietnam to be recycled. I don’t know how much this happens in Sihanoukville. I did notice that the cleaning woman at one of the hotels we stayed at had a stash of aluminum cans in a storage closet and the rest of the trash was taken out to the street to be burned.
2. Most people can’t afford private trash collection, so they burn their trash.
3. On average, 2700 plastic bags are used per person, per year in Cambodia. In 2014, the Tourism Minister urged Cambodian residents and businesses to reduce the use of plastic. This has not happened.

Should you go to Sihanoukville?

Yes! As of October 2016, I have been to Cambodia 4 times. I love this country. I’m only telling you that you that you probably don’t want to swim on Serendipity or Ochheuteal Beach. There is a much better beach available. We loved Otres Beach.

Another Look at Sihanoukville – 2014

November 2014

We take another look at Sihanoukville, Cambodia. Is it safe for travellers? How were the beaches? And did Ariadne ever eat any Khmer food?

We visited Sihanoukville during our 2012 SE Asia trip and to be honest, I hated it. The tuk tuk drivers were rude and agressive. The beaches were filthy with trash. My pregnancy complicated things, with the heat making me sick and even the smell of street food made me want to retch. I wasn’t planning to ever return but we needed visas for Vietnam and Sihanoukville was said to be the fastest place to get them.

Hat Lek–Koh Kong border crossing 2014

Once again, we were travelling overland in a shared minivan from Koh Chang, Thailand. Cambodian border officials like to try to charge you in Thai baht so that they can pocket the difference in the exchange rate. We were well prepared for this and had 90 US dollars with us to pay the correct fee for 3 Cambodia visas ($30 USD each).

This time we also managed to keep a tight hold on our luggage so we would not have anyone from the bus company try to hold it hostage while trying to make extra money filling out forms for us. We almost avoided the phony $1 health check fee but some idiot from the shared minivan noticed us and made such a big fuss calling us over to the health check that we had to pay the fake fee. You don’t pay this fee at other Cambodia borders, they only check your temperature and give you a yellow slip of paper that nobody will ever ask to see.

We already knew to go to the last window to pick up our arrival card to fill out, so we avoided any little helpers wanting to fill it out for us (for a small fee). The last door is the immigration office. You give them your filled out card, passport, and $30 USD. They will try to tell you that the fee is only payable in Thai baht. This is a lie. Tell them that you already changed all your baht to dollars because the embassy website said it was $30 for a visa. They will eventually give up. This year they wanted 1600 baht, which is closer to $48. I told them that I had only paid $25 in 2012 and he told me “No, it is now $30”. He had trapped himself. I happily passed over $90 for 3 visas. He also tried to tell me that I did not have room in my passport for another visa but I thought that was part of his scam so I insisted that he put it one of the two empty pages. More on this later. Walk out the door and go back to the window where you picked up the arrival card. They will take your fingerprints and stamp your passport. Welcome to Cambodia!

Where to stay in Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Since we only planned to stay in Sihanoukville long enough to get our visas for Vietnam, we weren’t too concerned about where were were going to stay. We chose Mick And Craig’s Restaurant and Guesthouse because it was closest to the landmark that I told the tuk tuk driver we were going to (Golden Lion Circle). Mick And Craig’s was okay. The rooms could be a little cleaner and the door lock needed to be fixed but the staff was friendly and helpful. There are lots of hotels and guesthouses on this road and you should be able to find something just by walking in and asking. Monkey Republic is very popular with younger backpackers. If you want a nice beach and less chaos, book something in advance on Otres Beach. I would personally stay away from the Victory Hill area. It is too far from the main beaches and the entire area is pretty seedy.

Families with young children may want to consider Sokha Beach Resort. It is much more expensive, but it has a private beach, swimming pool, and a small playground. Babysitting services are also available.

Serendipity Beach and Ochheuteal Beach

In 2012, we found Serendipity Beach too disgusting to even consider swimming. Trash was everywhere and raw sewage was discharged into the water from a pipe. This year, the beach looked much cleaner but I don’t know if the sewage disposal problem has changed. The jet skis zipping around people swimming was enough to make us not want to take a test swim.

The vendors and bracelet sellers were much less aggressive this time around and nobody cursed at us for turning them down. I don’t know if they realized that their aggressive techniques were not working or if it was because we had the baby with us this time. That has been the big change on this trip. Cambodians are so much more friendly when they see you have a baby with you. I felt much more welcomed and less threatened when everyone had a smile for the baby.

If you want a clean beach, every local will tell you that Otres Beach is the place to go. We did not have time to to visit this trip because I made a small mistake.

Remember when that border official told me that I didn’t have any more room in my passport for visas? I thought that was just part of his attempt to get more money out of me because clearly there were two pages left (one for Cambodia and one for Vietnam). I had planned to get more pages added once we got to Ho Chi Minh City. The night before going to the Vietnam Consulate, I looked at my passport. The last two pages, one now with a visa for Cambodia, were clearly marked “not for visas”. Those last pages are amendment pages, reserved by the US Department of State for amendments to the passport. Oops. We quickly changed our plans and decided to go to Phnom Penh so that I could get new pages added to my passport.

Where to eat in Sihanoukville

I swear that I am not a picky eater. I think that this blog sometimes makes me sound like I am because I am always talking about the things I didn’t eat. And of course, this time is no different. You see, we have a really good friend that was a chef at a restaurant in Sihanoukville for a year. He told us lots of kitchen stories from Sihanoukville that would be sure to put anyone off of eating. I won’t go into too many details, but there was one story about beef bones bought from a night market that had been sitting in a piss filled gutter. These were made into soup stock. That was enough to spoil my appetite. I asked him for some recommendations before we left which were not too helpful because that guy will eat anything. So where did we eat?

Slumdog Curry – Utopia Food Court, off of Serendipity Beach Road. I love you Slumdog Curry. You are cheap and delicious. I never want to know what your kitchen looks like because I want to keep believing that it is immaculate. Please keep serving yummy Indian food.

Maybe Later – Serendipity Beach Road. Our chef friend recommends the fish tacos. They were pretty good. Excellent salsa. Michael also loved the tacos which is a lot coming from him since he is not a fan of Tex Mex. Friendly staff. Also looks like a good place to have a few drinks.

Ernie’s Burgers – Mithona Street. Fantastic black bean burgers. Great service. The cheese fries were disappointing, very small amount of cheese.

Sandwich shop – Serendipity Beach Road, just down from Monkey Republic. I forgot the name of this place but it has the Dagwood comic character on the sign. Good sandwiches and pasta salads.

Roti cart – Serendipity Beach Road in the evenings. Thin crepes that can be filled with bananas and topped with chocolate sauce or Nutella. Tasty, very cheap and it is cooked right in front of you.

Breakfast – I have never had a good Western style breakfast in Cambodia. I think it has something to do with the amount of oil they use to cook the eggs instead of using butter. Mick and Craig’s had okay scambled eggs and toast but the coffee is terrible. Rice and pork is the traditional Cambodian breakfast and I don’t eat pork so I can’t give you a recommendation.

Safety in Sihanoukville

Is Sihanoukville safe for travellers? That depends on what you mean by “safe”. In some ways, you are much safer than certain cities in the United States because you are not going to get killed in a drive by shooting. Can you run around drunk on the streets and beaches at night? No, it is not safe. Use caution. Don’t carry anything valuable with you or flash expensive jewelry or electronic devices. I don’t carry a handbag in Cambodia because there is a good chance that someone on a motorbike will try to snatch it from you and you could get seriously injured in the attempt. Don’t walk on the beaches alone at night (male or female).

Do you get loud and aggressive when you drink? Keep your mouth shut here and don’t start fights, especially with Khmer men. The authorities will always take the side of locals. Enjoy yourself, just don’t act like a drunken idiot.

Keep your valuables and passport in the hotel safe. Hotel rooms do get robbed on occasion.

All that said, we had a great time and never felt any real threats. Next stop, Phnom Penh.