Otres Beach, Cambodia: My Past Experience

I spent a week on Otres Beach in Cambodia back in 2014, staying in a simple beachfront guesthouse and living the laid-back backpacker side of Sihanoukville before it changed into something else entirely. As I’m reading much has changed this, maybe this article survive as a little historical bittersweet snapshot of what once was.

Otres Beach in 2014:

• Where I stayed: Sunshine Café, a small beachfront guesthouse. I have no idea if it still exists.
• Room: around $12 a night for a double, shared bathroom at the time
• Style: DIY guesthouses and bungalows strung right along the shore
• Connectivity: little to no WiFi or mobile data
• My stay: 7 nights, extended twice
• Location: Otres Beach, Sihanoukville, Cambodia

A note for current travellers: I visited Otres Beach in 2014, when it was still a famously low-key backpacker stretch of simple beach bungalows, small restaurants and guesthouses along the sand. Otres and the wider Sihanoukville area have changed a lot since then or so I hear, so the accommodation, prices and businesses mentioned below are historical rather than current recommendations. If you’re researching a trip to Otres Beach today, check current sources before you book anything based on what you read here.

Finding Somewhere to Stay on Otres Beach

Arriving in Otres Beach, I spent a good hour combing up and down the two dozen or so guesthouses that lined the sand and beach road, comparing rooms and prices. With no 3G or WiFi to check Tripadvisor, and with the Lonely Planet recommendation of the Koh Kong Guesthouse still fresh in my mind, I was understandably taking my time to have a close look.

I saw lots of nice (and some not-so-nice) places, but Mien Mien looked good. 15$ a night for a double room right on the beach, private bathroom included. Sold. I was sure I remembered the name from somewhere, but not quite sure where… Check in, get online and – ah. That’s why the name rang a bell: I realized that some people were saying they’d had a rat problem. Uh-oh. This was confirmed the following morning when I found either rat or mouse crap in my bathroom, and later on the bed. So I noped the f’ out before having any real-life encounters, shouldered my bag and got right out of there.

My Stay at Sunshine Café

I ate breakfast that morning at Sunshine Café, further up the beach, and was happy to find a spacious, clean double room at $12 per night. Shared bathroom, but whatever. It wasn’t on Tripadvisor and reviews were lacking online back then, so after extending my stay to seven nights, and reluctantly leaving only then, I thought it deserved a bit of exposure.

First, the good. Only six rooms – three bungalows, three rooms above the restaurant – all smack right on the beach. My bungalow had the basics: fan, mosquito net, double bed and was plenty big enough. The sand is wide on this part of Otres beach, they have plentiful loungers and comfy chairs. The massage girls and sunglass salesmen are present but not too pushy (slightly worse on slow days… I couldn’t get out of having my legs threaded after a bit of a haggling mishap on my part). The staff are always present and very friendly. I felt that this might be one of the few if only Khmer-owned place in Otres beach. Bathrooms were cleaned every morning. Two very friendly resident dogs are just the icing on the cake.

I ate breakfast, and usually lunch here every day. Delicious fresh fruit shakes – I went for watermelon, other days peanut and banana. The prices were some of the cheapest on the beach and the food was great (lots of vegan options, always a win for me on the road, you can find more of my vegan travel finds here) — definitely recommend the mango salad and amok vegetables, recipes will likely follow. And seriously, the portions were huge. Honestly, I like to eat, a lot, and most meals finished with me scraping the plate clean and eyeing up whatever the next table hadn’t finished. It’s not often you find a place where a single dish is still too much for one person. So as well as being reasonably priced and delicious, I was kept well nourished for these hard days on the sand. In the evenings they have a barbecue — sadly meat and fish only — and light all the tables with tea lights. The atmosphere is hard to beat as the waves lap the shore by your feet and reggae music fills the air.

What Otres Beach Was Like in 2014

Now, the bad. I didn’t have a problem with shared bathrooms, particularly when living on the beach and the extent of washing is pretty much rinsing the salt away. The bathrooms were cleaned every day, but because they were shared between the guests and the restaurant, they could be a bit dirty come evening time. The water from the shower was island water – that is, it came from a tank and was a bit brown and stinky. Although that’s true of anywhere on the beach, not just here. Less forgivably, the bathrooms were in a mixed state of repair – the toilet seat wasn’t properly attached in one, the light went in the other a few days before and was still not fixed. Finally, my bungalow and the one adjacent were right next to the kitchen, so kitchen noise and (sometimes) smells filtered through. Not that I spent much time in the room. The beach could be a little noisy in the evenings, but on Otres pretty much everything was done and quietened down by 10pm.

Minor quibbles when your day basically consists of: get up, work out on the beach and then run into the sea to cool down. Eat fresh breakfast and fruit shake, then commence sunbathing. Eat lunch. Sunbathe. Sea. Sun. Sea. Sun. Sun. Buy fruit from fruit lady. Sun. Massage. Sun. Shower. Sunset. Eat dinner. Bed. Repeat as necessary. 

Tip: try and get the bungalow that faces right onto the sea.

Otres Beach Then and Now

Otres Beach has changed a huge amount since I stayed there. What was once a stretch of simple bamboo bungalows and beach shacks has, in large part, given way to major development around Sihanoukville, with a lot of the old backpacker-era guesthouses replaced or pushed out entirely. If you’re picturing the Otres I described above, dirt tracks, DIY guesthouses, barely any WiFi, that version has mostly disappeared.

That said, the beach itself hasn’t vanished, and current travellers still describe long, relatively clean stretches of sand split roughly into Otres 1 and Otres 2, with Otres 1 generally busier and Otres 2 quieter. So this isn’t a “don’t bother going” story. It’s more that Otres today is a different place than the one I stayed on for a week in 2014, and I’d rather be upfront about that than pretend my old prices and guesthouse names are still useful for planning a trip.

Amélie

Amélie is a health and wellness junky. Certified yoga instructor with Yoga Alliance in the Vinyasa and Ashtanga styles, she has a Yoga Instructor Certification – Level I (300 hours) and Yoga Instructor Certification – Level II (200 hours) under her belt. She also has a certified Open Water Diver certification with PADI and SSI Scuba Schools International Freediving Level I certification with SSI Scuba Schools International. She’s been vegan for over 15 years and is obsessed with anything wellness-related.