When Planning a Tour to Sihanoukville: Probably Wait to Come Back Another Decade or Never Again

Turns out, the bus ride was nothing spectacular though I did remember it making a couple weird stops just for a bathroom break. One being in a really dark highway with tall grass, and another being a legitimate bus stop with real urinals. Not that I even thought of doing my business in the first stop.. We then arrived at Sihanoukville at least an hour and a half earlier than our ETA, so we took the time to notify and local travel agent of our arrival thru WhatsApp (Yeah, this app proved to be really handy in this part of our tour).

A peak into Sihanoukville's landscape

Passing by the Golden Lions Rotunda

We got picked up from the terminal a little past the designated time that was indicated in our itinerary, so it really was all a rush once we got to our hotel:

No sea view here, but they've got a nice pool though..

The dining area that served no food.

Rooms looking barely finished..

Since our itinerary indicated that our boat tour would start at 9AM, we only had at least another 30 minutes to freshen up and get changed for the day before we left for the pier. Upon getting our boat tickets however, we found out that our tour was to start at 10AM.

Since we had a good hour to kill and with no boat in sight, we decided to have breakfast instead at the Yasmin Cafe by the pier, no matter how our local tour agent, Ms. Chumpy said that we would have food on the boat:

I wasn't up for anything big, so I tried their fruit salad instead...

Mom had coffee and a sandwich

We then waited another hour before our boat actually arrived! So yeah, I could brush off the delay since they did have a nice open deck and all..

They really had food on board #CuteBreads

Until we were later informed another hour later that the boat had suffered engine failure!!! Like really, how the hell were we even supposed to start our island hopping now?! This is where WhatsApp really came in handy 'cuz it was really nice of Ms. Chumpy to have done all the talking while I just held my phone out like some ignorant tourist. After much negotiating refunded ticket, and some impromptu resolving, the crisis was mainly averted.

As you can see from our "FINALLY!!!" faces

In the end, Ms. Chumpy only found us a ticket for a one island tour (Koh Rong), which wasn't all that bad since at least we still managed to have time at the beach:

We left the main island of Sihanoukville at around 12NN and we were advised to be the Koh Rong's pier if we were to leave that same afternoon at 4PM. We later found out that most establishments on the island were only open between the hours of 12MN-12NN so we didn't really get to see some of the restaurants (like the Sky Bar).

Lunch 'cuz I'm just too tired to eat anything at the moment

It was a good thing our driver knew where we would be docking 'cuz we arrived on a completely different pier back in Sihanoukville! Our driver turned out to be a stickler for whatever the agency just ordered him to do, so we couldn't really ask him to stop by a restaurant just so we'd grab some dinner for takeaway. We ended up walking a good two blocks from our hotel that night freakin' hotel didn't have ANY food AT ALL just to find a decent place to eat.

We encountered Escape Cafe, where we had a quick dinner, before I booked from the PassApp a ride back to our hotel (it was getting pretty dark down by the roads). I needed the nightly swim by the pool after the harrowing events of the day, and somehow I now started to miss home.. We leave the Kingdom of Cambodia in my next post, but there are still more experiences to be encountered!