Otres

As the sun creeps over the grass roof behind me, little can be heard over the lapping of the waves and the songs of the birds. It's after 7 am already and the bar man of two restaurants down is the only one other than myself stirring on this beach. From time to time the engine of a moto (as they call scooters in Cambodia) rolls past on the red dirt road out in front of the Indigo on Otres, the nice little restaurant with grass bungalow lodging that Mihai found on one of the booking sites.

Otres beach is one of several beaches of a small peninsula in the south of Cambodia. It's the beach furthest to one end, therefore less impacted by development. It was suggested to me by a friend who was just here about a month and a half ago. According to a map I saw a couple of days ago, there is Otres 1 and Otres 2, two stretches of beach flanking the town of Otres. The beach is quite long but not wide at all. Looking along the coast you see a zigzag of sand showing clear signs of erosion. It makes me wonder about how it happens and what are effective ways of dealing with it.

The restaurant, a couple of places down, is attempting to deal with beach erosion now. Over the past couple of days, a group of young Cambodians have been working hard to build a kind of wall. It started with a concentrated line of thick tree branch supports jutting out from the sand about five feet out in front of the restaurant. The young men worked as small waves crashed at their feet. Next, planks of wood were stacked up against the inside of the supports. I like to think they were nailed into place but that may not be the case. Sandbags were piled on the inside of the wooden barrier. Just yesterday, they were digging up sand from inside and outside the barrier to pile on the and in between those sandbags. After watching this happen, I couldn't help to think that there may be a better way to do it, maybe with more sturdy materials. And damn, its almost a perfect setup for a deck out over the water, which may or may not be legal here.

More folks are up and about now. One man is swimming out to his boat. From my chair, I can count eleven boats floating in the water just off the coast. They are spread out, waiting to start their day shuffling tourists around islands on a tour that they have been trying to sell to me since I arrived. The tour takes people to islands visible from here where they can go snorkeling and do some fishing. I'm too slow at making decisions. It wasn't until last night that I finally decided in my head that I'd like to do it, but nobody came by to sell it to me after that and so I never booked it. The boat leaves at 9 and if I see them between now and then, maybe I'll hop on.

Otres is part of a long line of beaches in an area known as Sihanoukville. Sihanoukville is a city that contains the only sea port of Cambodia and really didn't start to develop until the 90s when the UN was shipping aid supplies in. For that reason, route 4 connecting the port with the capital was built. It took us about 6 hours by bus to travel that route from Phnom Penh a couple of days ago. From there we took a half hour tuk tuk ride along the coast to arrive at Otres.

Indigo bungalows

Sihanoukville is a small coastal city named after the former king of Cambodia who died a couple of years ago and abdicated the thrown to his son ten years before that. It is pretty clear when walking around Phnom Penh that the king was either revered by his people, by himself, or both. There is a city named after him, a large boulevard named after him, a large statue of him on that boulevard. He's on the money. One thing I found quite funny, a statue of Napoleon III situated in front of the Silver Pagoda has Napoleon's face removed and it was replaced by the kings. I discovered in a guidebook that he used to direct and produce his own films in which his friends and family acted, him playing the lead role, and they took the top awards at his own international film festivals.

Here on Otres beach, the neighbors are preparing the boat for a tour. Today is our last beach day. Tomorrow, we'll head back to Phnom Penh for one night, then on to Siem Reap to spend a few days walking around temples. We won't see the beach again for another 6 weeks as the trip will take us to northern Thailand and Laos before coming back south for that nice tropical beach experience in southern Thailand. I must say, it's hard to leave this setting here on Otres. Some say the islands are nicer than in Thailand. There are fewer people, very little development, clearer waters, more to look at under the sea. Maybe they're right, but for now I'm satisfied.