We had a reasonable night sleep and decided to stay another night here. We extended our stay then we headed out to check out the local area. The first impressions were not great and this Victory Hill area turned out be ex-pat central. We may have explained already but expat is short for ex patriot and basically refers to westerners who have settled in a country. This area of Victory Hill used to be the cult backpacking area but now it has been turned into a sleaze fest. We learnt that prostitution is rife here and all the bars are very seedy which you could tell even in the day time.

We headed round to the beach which was quite frankly, awful and Laura had obviously made up her mind at once, we are getting out of here! We made the walk back to hostel, cancelled the room and got on the case for looking for somewhere to stay tonight t the beaches further away. I ordered some fried rice from the hostel as I was too lazy to find somewhere and it was mediocre at best. After a stressful period of searching hostel websites and trip advisor we found our second choice on Otres beach, which apparently, is the best beach in Sihanoukville. We thought we would book one night at the "footprints hostel" and see what he area was like and go from there.

On leaving the hostel we were advised to haggle hard by Big John as tuk tuks will really overcharge. On exiting two chaps on motos (motorbike taxis) offered us a price and we haggled them down to a reasonable amount. We did not really think about what we were doing until we were on the bikes. We were both on the back of a motor bike with no helmet... Plus a huge back pack each and a big bag at our chests.... was pretty crazy. To be fair, this is Cambodia and the drivers were very good and negotiated the hairy bits well, plus they eventually got us to our destinations in one piece after a little bit of map reading.

On arrival we were at the south end of Otres beach which is separated from the north by a development area of 0.5 miles. The setting was beautiful with the hostel being right on the beach which you will see on the photos. Our room was one of the double rooms around the front which was wooden with a mosquito net draped over the bed. It was really nice and what we had hoped for, but didn't get, in Thailand. The hostel had a bar near the reception area and a common area attached to it. There were a few fellow travellers on the sofas watching a movie on the LCD TV attached to the wall. We dumped off our stuff and Laura, as usual was straight onto the beach. Otres beach is very thin, long and covered in beautiful white sand. There was bits of drift wood and rubbish that did spoilt its appearance a little, but generally it was amazing. We chilled out and grabbed a beer but was astonished at the very expensive menu on offer. I guess it's the whole supply and demand here things as there isn't a lot of competition on this secluded part of the beach.

We decided to walk down to the north end of the beach where their were other hotels and bars. We walked around grabbed a beer during happy hour at one of the bars and watched the BBQ burning with the sunset backdrop. After a couple, we wandered through the area and found what looked like a local street stall but it looked fairly dead. We entered and spoke to young man inquiring whether they did food, his English was OK and told us we could have noodle soup or fried noodles... (Think it was someone's house lol). It was very cheap and tasty and we were both satisfied with our nights work. We haggled a moto back to our hostel for a dollar and both retired looking forward to a refreshing night sleep, we would be disappointed.