Otres on a Monsoon Sunday: the Cambodians' Beach

Ten minutes from Kampong Dewa, Otres Beach has nothing left of the wooden bungalows that made its name among backpackers. It has something else, best seen on an August Sunday when the sky is low and the sea is grey: families from Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh, plastic chairs under the casuarinas, vendors of inflatable rings and ice cream, and, across the bay, the city's towers looking on. A photo report.

Late afternoon on Otres. At the end of the bay, the pier and the line of Sihanoukville's towers

First, what Otres no longer is. The thatched huts, the two-dollar hammocks, the English-named bars that for ten years made this beach the favourite address of backpackers were cleared around 2020, when the city decided to take back its shoreline. What remains is a strip of pale grey sand several kilometres long, a closely planted avenue of casuarinas, and a road behind. Nothing to rent, nothing to book. You come, you sit, you leave.

And people come in numbers. That August Sunday, under a monsoon sky that never let go of a drop, the beach belonged to the Cambodians. Families from Sihanoukville down for the afternoon, cars with Phnom Penh plates parked under the trees, grandmothers sitting on mats, children in orange life jackets. Nobody sunbathes; people swim in their clothes, eat, watch the sea. This is the beach as the country practises it, and it looks nothing like the brochures.

Beneath the lifeguard tower, with its Khmer roof and carved pediment, a family has set its blue plastic table

The casuarinas

They are what make the beach. A line of black-trunked trees with fine needles, bent by the sea wind, whose shade cuts improvised living rooms onto the sand. Each family has its own: a mat, a cool box, a portable speaker, sandals in a row. The roots, laid bare by the tides, are held in place by rows of stakes and tarpaulin; one senses the sea is advancing. Between the trunks, hammocks for sale, parasols in beer and energy-drink colours, and the procession of vendors passing through.

The avenue of casuarinas, tables under the trees and, offshore, the islands. An ice-cream seller on a motorbike crosses the sand

Those who sell

Otres is a market on the move. Ice cream comes by in a green two-wheeled cart, giant cones standing up like a bouquet beneath a furled parasol; the vendor wears a yellow hat and a mask. Skewers and fruit arrive by motorbike, in yellow crates stacked on the rack, plastic bags flying. Life jackets are rented by the piece, hung from a rope stretched between two trees, next to pink and green beach buckets and a pile of rings shaped like swans, unicorns and ducks. A red and green banana boat waits on the sand for its load of passengers; a jet ski idles at the water's edge. Everything is settled in riel, by voice, without a menu.

The ice-cream seller's cart, cones in a bouquet, parasol furled

Orange life jackets to rent, buckets and rings to buy, a vendor dozing in his hammock

The sea and the sky

The sea that day was not the one on the postcards. Grey, restless, capped by a storm sky where the sun broke through in curtains, it rolled short waves onto hard sand. The children went in anyway, a seahorse ring under one arm, an oversized life jacket on their backs. A father held his daughter at arm's length in the foam. Offshore, the silhouettes of the islands; to the right, the pier and the city. There is a particular beauty to monsoon beaches, made of contrast rather than light, and Otres has it.

Seahorse ring and green life jacket: swimming in one's clothes, and going in regardless

Facing the city

One cannot photograph Otres without photographing Sihanoukville. From everywhere, the line of towers closes the horizon to the north: finished blocks, others stopped halfway up, motionless cranes, a Ferris wheel. Directly behind the casuarinas, two towers of bare concrete and a façade of blue glass await the end of a building site. The families settled at their feet pay them no attention, and that is perhaps the lesson of the day: the city has built a great deal and left a great deal unfinished, but the beach has gone back to its first use. A Sunday afternoon, people eating together facing the sea.

Rings to rent, black inner tubes and, behind the casuarinas, Sihanoukville's unfinished towers

Looking north: the bay, the jet ski and the city against the light

We left as the light began to fall behind the clouds. On the road, the cars were leaving the verges one by one, the carts were heading home, and the casuarinas kept their empty mats for the following Sunday.

Practical information

Otres Beach, south of Sihanoukville, about ten minutes by car from Kampong Dewa and the airport. Public beach with no fixed facilities; chairs, mats, ice cream, skewers, life jackets, rings, banana boat and jet ski are rented or bought on the spot from the vendors. Busiest at weekends and public holidays in the late afternoon. In the rainy season, beware of currents in rough seas and of late-afternoon storms.