Day 21, Tuesday 11th May, Sihanoukville

To celebrate the approaching end of my trip, I breakfasted in the Coolabah on muesli with yogurt on the terrace bar.

With the whole day before me, and having seen that there were hills, I decide NOT to rent a bicycle, but Instead a motor scooter, my first this trip (I rented one in Crete once).
For $5 and my passport I was given a helmet and a key, and shown how to start the machine, a 100 cc vehicle. No driver's licence was requested, though I'd gone to the extra trouble of getting an international one in Munich.
My scooter at Independence Beach:

 

Setting off, I noticed there was no fuel left, so sought out a roadside seller and filled up, 3 litres. Then I drove down the hill along Serendipity and Independence Beach, right to the end, then up a headland and down again to Otres Beach, reputed to be less commercial and quieter. Considering you needed a 4 wheel drive to get there, understandable. No shops, nothing but rough beach shacks and bungalows, many on stilts, offering cheap "rooms", more like doss-houses, made of grass, and in some places, free accommodation if you bought meals. The beach looked idyllic, but was still littered with plastic rubbish.

A kind of hideaway, for those that like it, totally inconvenient without transport. Right at the end of the beach there was a private holiday house with some westerners in it and a Phnom Penh 4 wheel drive parked outside. It was there I ran into a few healthy-looking pigs.

Not wanting to return the same way, I headed inland past a few small houses and some half-built derelict-looking hotels. Back of the beach there were large areas enclosed with concrete walls, but no indication of their purpose. Unfinished projects? All that's left of 1960's holiday cottages?

The road was red dirt and rock and sand, which had me slithering round a fair bit til I got the hang of it. Twice I have fallen off rented bikes on holiday and broken bones, once in Garda and once on Naxos, where it was soft sand that was my undoing. Since the next western-standard medical care was in the next country, Thailand, I was extra careful.
Here are some cows in a village:

 And a somewhat dilapidated (but not untypical) bridge:

 After a long excursion into the hinterland and some guesses about how to get back, I found a wide sealed road, with a brand new, as yet empty condominium enclave, against the border wall of which a row of tin-roofed, inhabited shacks huddled. Current workers, later servants?

Back to the Golden Lion Roundabout, over the hill and down to Sokha Beach, which has been sold almost completely to a resort, so the pristine sands are only to be enjoyed by paying guests. Taking a wide inland curve around said resort I drove on towards Victory Beach, well-looked after and also largely private, where they had a squad of 4 sweeping the sand to get rid of the rubbish:
 

I was looking for the ferry port, as I wanted to find out about a (possibly mythical) ferry boat to Koh Kong, near the Thai border. This would have been a more interesting route back to Bangkok, but information had been imprecise, and anyway the bus trip from Trat in Thailand to Bangkok would have been at least another 5 hours, after 4 hours sea ferry, tuk-tuk to the border and minibus to Trat.
I found a road which seemed right but rode past the ferry port entrance twice before realising the third time around this must be it.

Looking back towards the port of Sihanoukville

 This is the ferry port, you can see a white boat moored at the pier in the background. Unfortunately, since the road to Koh Kong through the Cardamom Mountains has been inproved and there's a bus service, the ferry only goes to Koh Khang, I was told.

 Here is my motorscooter parked in front of the ferry booking office, in the shade there are some ducks.

 Well-trained ducks waiting for the ferry:

On the way back I noticed another bicycle dealer, this time with a load of plastic household goods:

I returned to Serendipity via the town centre, which was supposed to have interesting restaurants, but I saw none. I visited the market for my last chance at gifts and souvenirs, but found nothing appealing. 
Back at my local beach, I risked a quick swim, managing to avoid contact with  various pieces of flotsam and jetsam in the water.

Ocheuteal Beach, late afternoon:

Swimmers and non-swimmers (in vests):

I had the scooter for the whole day, so decided to nip back to Sokha Beach for sunset.
Rocks at the end of Sokha Beach:

 Sunset at Sokha Beach:

Afterwards a last dip in the hotel pool and a shower and change.


In Phnom Penh I had booked an Air Asia flight from there to Bangkok for the 12th May, one day before my flight to Australia, but I needed a printout of my itinerary and also of my hotel reservation in Bangkok.  The first internet cafe said: no printer, electricity is weak in the evening (?). The next gave me his terminal and I managed to do a web check-in and get a printout with readable bar codes on the second try.

The Bangkok hotel accepted online booking no later than 4 days in advance, so I just sent an email.
The bus back to Phnom Penh was dealt with by a competent young lady at the travel agency next to the hotel. The price of $5 included pickup, I was to be in the hotel  restaurant, in front, at 10 am, the bus was scheduled to depart at 10:30 (my flight to Bangkok was 17:20).

All these travel plans now settled, I strolled around inspecting menus and ended up at the Casa, upstairs, where the house wine cost only $2 a glass. Unfortunately the white wine was not cold, so I stuck to beer. The place belonged to a couple of western women. In several places in town, I  had seen signs announcing businesses for sale at favourable prices, guesthouses, restaurants, which gave the impression that some people's dreams had not developed the way they'd hoped. Sihanoukville had lots of adventure activities for young people going on, just like all the other tourist venues, and it was well visited, but I guess there is a limit to the number of interested customers, at least now in the low season.