Found it, again.

I'm sitting in an internet cafe near my hotel in Bangkok, eating my breakfast, purchased from roadside hawkers, of tapioca-filled pancakes, fresh-cut pineapple and papaya, and mangosteen juice, and mentally preparing myself to deal with the tailors who will sell me a three-piece suit and some fresh shirts. That is all a story for another day, though, because I'm writing to tell you about something else: the beach.

The last four days, before leaving Cambodia for good, Kennon and I spent our time in Sihanoukville, a lazy beach town on the southern coast of the country, perched on the Gulf of Thailand. We sought and found a perfect beach there. Otres beach, five kilometers from the "town" proper, is difficult to get to. If you consider that the only access to the area is to cross the border in the south of either Vietnam or Thailand, or, alternatively, to fly to Phnom Penh and take either a three-hour life-threatening taxi or five-hour uncomfortable bus ride south, the last two kilometers over unpaved and quite rocky dirt road is nothing to fret about. You have simply been desensitized from the journey. Those last couple of kilometers, though, past vacant farmland, freely roaming cattle, and a row of tented families living without electricity will make you question your direction and resolve the first time you make the trip. Are we really going the right way?

The payoff is when you come over the last hill, right next to the small community that subsists there, and see the deep green water that awaits. The beach itself, because it is almost completely inaccessible, has very little development. There are probably four serious businesses, willing to give you a hut 15 feet from the break of the water or fresh seafood, coconut shakes, and beers. The water, as I said, is a color of green I have only seen in the Gulf of Thailand, and it is something to behold. The white sands stretch cleanly and unspoiled around the curvature of the coast. The tall trees rise close to the water, providing shade and protecting the coast like sentinels. And the islands in the distance, where you can book snorkeling and diving adventures back in town, frame the scene.

Kennon and I made the trip to this beach two times. The first time, it was almost sunset. The second time, we came much earlier and made a day of it. While I sat eating freshly caught and grilled squid and watched the water brush up against the shore, sharing this beach with only, perhaps, fifteen other people, my only wish was that we had found this particular spot a little earlier.

All in all, I am simply glad I found it at all. It would be easy to miss, with only a small write-up in our travel book. This beach, it goes without saying, is one of the best beaches I have ever seen, ranking in the same category as Kendwa Beach, Zanzibar, Thong Nai Pan Noi, Koh Phangan, Thailand, and Bond Beach, at Railey, near Krabi, Thailand. The four are all unbelievably beautiful; that all are extremely difficult to access may well be concomitantly the source of this as well as a part of the romanticism of finding them. The experience is fleeting, though, as down the beach there appeared that the first luxury accommodation for this section of Sihanoukville is in the works.