23. The Diving Plan

One topic that kept coming up between Pat and I was diving. Both of us had recently qualified for our advanced open water and so we spent a lot of time talking about our experiences of that, and how if the opportunity came up we should both do a dive. We were both friends and at the same level diving-wise so made sense to arrange something.

We did intend to do a scuba dive in Cambodia, but according to reports the quality of the water isn’t good and the marine life isn’t the best.

A few days before new years, to make up for not diving here Pat and I decided to rent some Kayaks instead and explore the coast a little.

 When we got back we found Nico in his usual wicker chair, with Cam. Cam was having a quiet evening and had only drunk 4 bottles of red wine. The sun was throwing glorious orange rays across the sky.

“You’re missing the sunset, Nico!” We said
“fuck the sunset” He replied


That night there was excited talk of fire plankton in the sea. I hadn't seen "the beach" yet, so didn't really know what the fuss was all about. I decided to go for a bit of a late night dip to see. It was my first experience of fire plankton. In the darkness when you move the plankton’s natural bioluminescence is triggered which creates a bright blue glow whenever you move. Quite incredible.

Later on Pat and I got talking about diving again, and how it was a shame that we wouldn’t dive during our time here. So we began to wonder: Surely there were some good dive spots in our general global vicinity? Neither of us had concrete plans for what to do after Cambodia, so one evening we made use of Google and sure enough a plethora of options presented themselves. It didn’t take us long to settle on Malaysia, more specifically Sipadan Island of Borneo. It boasted incredible coral; turtles; and something that I especially wanted to see: reef sharks.

I couldn’t book the flights fast enough!

22. My hours at Lim Hour

Over the next few days we settled in to Lim Hour bungalows, familiarising ourselves with our new home and the other guests residing there. Some of the more memorable folk were:

• Cam the ex-pat Aussie surfer bum, who was in his mid fifties and determined to drink himself to death. He basically sat in the front common area with a glass of wine glued to his hand slurring his wisdom at anyone that would listen. 
•  Another common area stalwart was Nico from Norway who never seemed to go anywhere. 
• German Thomas, who was (aside from being largely incomprehensible and crazy) apparently a roadie for faith no more and various other famous bands; 
• Adi bass from Israel, 
• Dave from Canada

Best of all were the staff headed up by Mr Lim and his son. Aside from the standard duty of manning the front desk or taking our food orders they would usually just sit with us chatting in the common area and were very lovely people.

I quickly formed a routine here.

1. Crawl out of bed around noon. 
2.  Shuffle into the common area to have an omelette for breakfast. 
3. After this I would usually sign into my spotify on the computer behind the front desk, put some music on for Cam and Nico. 
4. The afternoon would pass with me helping myself to a drinks; playing pool with whoever was about; taking swims (being careful not to have my toe sliced off by one of the billion crabs that lived on the seabed), or just reading. 

Otres beach, not bad looking. Plenty of crabs

1. In the evening I’d head over to Richies to drink beer and paddle.
2. At some late hour I'd head back to Lim Hour for a nightcap and a chat.
3. At some point it would be necessary to carry Cam to his bed because he was too drunk to move.
4. Pass out

Most of the staff would sleep in or around the common area in hammocks. I remember one evening I was sat outside the bungalow and it was late, drunkenly shooting the shit with Pat. But disaster! I needed cigarettes. Everyone was asleep though so I couldn't get them in the usual way. So I had to employ my finest drunken sneakyness and crept into the common area where Mr Lim's son was dozing, careful not to wake him. Behind the front desk I helped myself to a pack of cigarettes, and a couple of beers since I was there, and headed back victorious.

It may have been my imagination but I was sure I noticed his eyes ever so slightly open.

21. Otres Beach, parte the first: Settling in

We awoke in the morning feeling refreshed. We were promptly informed by the miserable receptionist that we need to get out because they are fully booked for that night. We later discover this is because they booked out all of the rooms for a family do. Their own family do. It was nice of them to tell us this when we checked in! I wasn’t too bothered in any case because the whole lot of them are miserable as sin, and the room wasn’t that great.

So with that, we headed out.

The Otres beach area is basically a stretch of dirt road maybe half a mile in length. It runs next to the sea, with a row of guest houses and bar/restaurants on each side. It’s not built up at all. Quite the opposite: the road doesn’t have any tarmac on it and there are cows and chickens running about all over the place. It’s quaint and rustic but I got the feeling that it wouldn’t be long before it became built up.

About halfway along the “strip” we stopped for breakfast at a bar called Richies on the beach side. A scottish family were running it, so and had quite a few home comforts on the menu. I immediately ordered bangers and mash and devoured it the second it arrived. I quickly warmed to the place. It felt a bit like the cheers bar. Well: Maybe if the cheers bar had been made of bamboo, built on a beach. And you could smoke joints at the bar. 
It had a family of multinational bar flies who all got along in the interest of the common good, which I gathered to be getting stoned and going for swims in the sea. In fact this lifestyle I gathered was typical of the Otres beach area. It had a strong community feel with the ex-pats and Cambodian nationals getting along in the sunshine.

Something that had been on my mind was that there were only a few days to go before the Christmas and New Year season kicked in. My vague requirement was that I spend it somewhere sunny by the sea, but was aware that lots of people might want the same thing, and so rooms might all fill up. Otres beach seemed to fit my requirements very nicely, though. Pat seemed to be of the same opinion, and so with that in mind we decided to find somewhere to stay for Christmas, which would then take us up to the end of our Cambodian visas.

After some reconnaissance we found “Lim Hour” bungalows which had rooms free. They said they were ok with us staying there until after new year, although we were warned that prices might increase a little as it gets busier. We’re cool with that so take a room. In order to try and save money we decided to share a twin bungalow.

And thus we had properly settled at Otres, our home for the next month.

20. Sihanoukville

I had assumed the bus to Sihanoukville would take mere moments. How wrong I was. It rattled and beeped it's way to the coast over the course of the entire day. Eventually we got to the town. The bus purposefully parked miles away from the town center in some random gravelly expanse on a hill where tuk tuk drivers hovered like vultures. Pat and I, seasoned travelers that we were, decided to be very brutal hagglers. We ambled past the punters uttering phrases like “Nope, 5 dollars? what a rip off. I’m going to walk!” I think we had both actually convinced ourselves that we would walk to town, so we were all but walking down the hill when we thought better of it since the sun had set and it was late. We took an offer of $4.

It was dark by the time we got into what looked like the center of town. Some advance reading of Lonely Planet had yielded a few options of guest houses we could stay at. However spurred on with our success at tuk tuk haggling we felt like we could easily wing it, so we just jumped out of the tuk tuk, ignoring whatever the driver was saying and aimlessly wandered off.

There was a problem with our tactic, however, which was that it seemed that there was no obviously condensed and useful arrangement of accommodation where we were. Our old driver seemed fully aware of this and just hovered around and followed us.
We had heard mutterings in the traveler grapevine that Otres beach is way nicer than Sihanoukville, so between us we agreed that we should abandon town and head there right away. Our predatory tuk tuk driver friend was eager to jump on this. “Oh Otres beach? Yes I can easily take you there but its verrrry far, easily 15 dollars!” We had an idea from maps that it wasn't too far and that $15 dollars was a bit expensive, so headed down a likely looking street that seemed to contain some activity and found another tuk tuk. Our old driver wasn't going to lose the business so easily so hurried over to us. He entered into something of a bidding war with the second driver, but couldn't match the newcomers competitive fare of $10. We thanked them both and headed off.

It turned out that is it was actually quite a drive from Sihanoukville to Otres beach. There were no lights at all except for one dim lamp at the front of the tuk tuk so we couldn't really see a thing around us. It was literally pitch black and a little unnerving. The vehicle was completely open sided and it went bumping and jolting over god knows what in the darkness for what seemed like hours.
Suddenly I felt some animal around the size of a pig noiselessly thud onto my feet from somewhere in the blackness. I let out a girlish shriek and flailed madly to extract my legs from under the beast. I nearly elbowed Pat in the head in the process. We were both lucky to not fall out of the speeding tuk tuk.
After a moment there was no further movement so I came to realise it couldn't be an alive thing. A tentative fumble revealed that the “animal” was actually Pat's back pack which must have slipped down from the seat in front of us. I breathed a sigh of relief and laughed off my slightly wounded dignity.

We arrived at our destination, which we only assumed by the fact that the tuk tuk stopped, although there was a distinct lack of signs, buildings or even lights to indicate that this was somewhere travelers might want to rest their heads.
At this point we were not really in the mood to shop around so we walked for a bit and took a room in the first guest house we could actually see. We were greeted by the most miserable person in existence at the front desk who begrudginly took our money.  It was late, and being quite exhausted we both got our head down fairly immediately.