Blog : Koh Rong (Monkey Island)

We were all feeling a little worse for wear on the bus from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville and as we'd booked the cheap one, there was no toilet, which with us all having the shots was a bit problematic! Every time we stopped we were all dashing off to go! It was normal coach style bus with pair of seated seats rather than the luxury individual lie down ones we had in Vietnam (we had obviously forgotten the horrors and cockroaches on the Camel travel buses already!) It took about five or six hours to get down to Sihanoukville, which did seem a bit of a s*** hole, the bits we saw anyway, whilst waiting for the ferry to the islands. We grabbed some luck to go from possibly the worlds slowest cafe and I sat and sweat disgustingly on a stuffy, hot and completely full bus all the way to the port, whilst trying to eat boiling hot potato wedges! We boarded the boat to Koh Rong which was quite small and looked like a traditional fishing boat and about 50 other people boarded as well. We didn't realise that it took over two hours to get from the coast to the island though, we'd assumed it would be like Thailand where the islands are pretty close to the main land.

When we got off the boat at Koh Rong we were all quite surprised at how underdeveloped and basic it was, as well as quite how incredibly beautiful. The sand was so fine and bright white, whilst the waters were so clear and emeraldy coloured. Lots of small thatched roof bungalows sat in the green hillside behind a couple of ramshacked looking bars lining the beach front. There were no cars or roads on the island and only electricity between 6-12pm or so. And most of the accommodation had no running water. The first hostel we stayed on was actually built on a pier 200m out to sea, on stilts! I found it so bizarre that although we had to shower with a bucket and pail they advertised wifi (which didn't work at the time but due to a technical fault!) Once we'd checked into the dorm that looked absolutely nothing like the hostel world website pictures, sans spiders, spider webs, other creepy crawlies, disgustingly dirty bed sheets, no lights or windows and with with beds crammed into a space smaller than a home bathroom, it was pretty grim. Oh yeah and no electricity at night means obviously no fans or the Asian saviour: air con! It was a sweaty and terrified nights sleep punctuated with images of giant tarantulas crawling inside my mozzie net and being right above me and also with trying to find the cold part of the bed, which disgustingly was always the massive sweat patch id just shuffled out of! After showering at the hostel and sorting ourselves out we went for a walk up and down the beach to see what was happening and if there was any other accommodation available for us to book in to... We also called in for Christa and Helen who had arrived a couple of nights earlier. Christa bless her heart had reserved us a second bungalow for the following night already so we were sorted and already felt happier about our time on Koh Rong :) We had an early ish dinner at one of the bar-restaurants along the beach, BBQed tuna was recommended to us so that's what I had with chips and salad and it was really nice, although perhaps a little fatty. It was pretty cheap though, we'd all thought that because it was an island the prices would go up a bit but that didn't seem the case. And it was still in its very early stages of tourism, we'd heard quite a few people say that the island had only really been established as a "destination" a few years ago and the bungalows we were staying in were only just a year old, so no such things as ATMs or real pharmacies or anything like that existed. We enjoyed a nice drink with Christa and Helen after dinner, at our table and we just chatted about everything you could do on the island... We decided to get up early the following morning and see the sunrise over the sea before doing the early morning yoga class, so we didn't go too heavy that night drinking, as we were all quite tired after the travelling and everything.

Lora woke us at 6am and she, Kate and I stumbled our way out of the hostel and to the end of our pier where we sat and watch the sun rise. It was quite misty at that time I. The morning but the sun made the whole sky look pink which was really lovely. We all headed down to the yoga class next and although we got incredibly sandy and all realised how inflexible we were, we all really enjoyed it and said the teacher was really great, after only a week of teaching experience on the island following an ashram course in India. We went for breakfast after a cooling swim, we all wanted fruit and smoothies to help us continue our healthy food vibe! After food and checking out of the first hostel - Koh Rong Backpackers and moving into our new bungalows (Lora, Christa and I shared one and Al, Alice and Kate were in another) we then went over to a little building on another pier where on every other day of the week some travellers had set up English lesson workshops for backpackers to help the children to learn. We went over with a whole bag of pencils and paper pads that Lora had brought out from home and a massive bag of haribo to give to all the children. They looked sooo excited when they saw all of our goodies!! The girl who'd set up the organisation was really sweat and thankful as well so we all felt good! The Cambodian girls I was sat with weren't really that interested in reading and sounding out vowels, so instead we played with some cards that Lora had with her and made origami flowers out of straws... The kids made them so fast it took me a while to work out how they were doing it and I spent most of the rest of the afternoon working it out whilst bobbing about it in the sea. I did teach one little girl how to plait straws together which she liked though. I had another really cute little boy who was a bit of a cheeky monkey keep crawling and climbing all over me and he would take the sunglasses from people around us and put them on me so I was wearing loads of them and chuckling to himself!

On the beach later in the afternoon I found that I kept getting eaten alive both sunbathing by sand flies and on the water by sea fleas. They absolutely ravaged me and turned me into one of those disgusting looking travellers with great big red welts all over their bodies and scratching like a rabied dog! They were and still are soo itchy and I'm doing the best I can to sit on my hands and not scratch the tops of them off clean but I'm not doing a very good job so far! Later in the evening we brought tickets to catch a ferry to the second island nearby, a slightly more "resorty" type one that was a bit more expensive, to a Full Moon party. It was billed to be similar to those in Thailand, with psychedelic trance music and house playing. We were quite worried about the timings though, as the only boat was 6 in the evening going out and 6 in the morning coming back... A long time to party for! But we got ready and headed over there with most of the others from our island. We also had to say goodbye to Helen as she was leaving us to head up to Siam Reap before flying to Thailand. It was very emosh saying goodbye to her as we'd spent the last six weeks solidly with her, travelling down the coast of Vietnam and crossing into Cambodia all together. Although thankfully it wasn't the end, as she's decided to come and travel India with us, on her way home to the UK.

On the boat over to the Full moon party there was only 80 people max. so I think we realised it wasn't going to be such a huge party and a lot of the people were in v casual clothes ready for chilling and joint smoking, presumably before harder stuff later in the night, which was exactly the case as it turned out. It took a lot longer than we thought to get to the island, an hour or so, and when we got there we were all pretty hungry so sat down for dinner in the resort restaurant and ordered BBQ. It took ages to come but when it did it was pretty nice, with veggie skewers and jacket potatoes all round. Although they forgot to make Kate an Lora's first time round! We tried to spread out everything we wanted to do over the evening, to pace ourselves from just being smashed by midnight! Some of the girls ordered pancake puddings and once they'd been eaten we shared a shisha pipe in the middle of the table. We got talking to three lads from London on the table next to us, all a bit older, thirty something or so and on holiday. They were nice and we spent a while playing silly hand and counting games to pass the time before the party really got going. The music playing was alright, as Lora said, it has words so we should be thankful rather than those songs that are just made up of weird electrical sounds! With each $2 Gordon's G and T that I drunk I accompanied it with two or so glasses of water so that I didn't get to dehydrated so I could last the night... The girls started straight away on the buckets and it wasn't long before works started to get a bit more slurred and some of them went for a little walk around the beach to scout any 'talent' on display! (Nana, that means fit men!) We all enjoyed a boogie on the sand dance floor next to the crazy loons who were high as kites and dancing as though on hot coals! One by one the girls began fall asleep on the seat cushions on the floor of the restaurant, along with at least half the rest of the party. They apparently ordered about three plates of chips too, each time they woke up! I kept checking on them to make sure they were alright in between boogying and chatting to the blokes with Christa, whom one had taken a particular shining to! By the time it was finally time to get back on the boat everyone was absolutely knackered and we all fell asleep on the luggage compartment! We sort of staggered off the boat and into a restaurant for breakfast and then promptly we all fell into food comas and had a good length nap in the chill out rooftop bit of our hostel bar. We headed back down to the beach for a bit of afternoon sunbathing and swimming but I really couldn't make up my mind which was worse - to be bitten by sand flies which are itchy as hell or to be nibbled by sea fleas which are kinda painful :/I went for a combo of both, trying to alternative between them quick enough that neither insects felt settled enough to start baring their teeth at me! We had a very late lunch in the afternoon and I wasn't hungry at all but i didn't want to get out of eating synch with the girls as I knew I'd be starving later and they wouldn't be so I had a veggie Khmer curry as I was yet to try one. Usually they're sort of like coconut soup so I didn't think it would be that filling, but it was absolutely delicious, really delicate spices and a light flavour and chunky bits of carrot and cabbage and other veg. It was really nice to eat proper veg as I was beginning to feel like all I'd eat in Cambodia was fried s*** or stodge. I couldn't finish the curry and left loads of the rice so I didn't feel too guilty for eating it though. Later we got ready at different speeds for dinner with none of us particularly rushing, until we suddenly realised the time and if we wanted to go for one last meal with Christa before leaving her then we'd need to get a wriggle on! Whilst the girls were showering I hairbraided her hair. I'd been promising to do it ever since we'd all met in the boat way back in Australia, travelling the Whitsunday islands. And every time we'd been together since, along the Aussie east coast, down Vietnam and through Cambodia, we kept saying we'd do it but just never got round to it. It was a really pretty one with lots of colours.. I've really got the hang of it now and can actually do the colour changes etc without needing to knot on every colour which I'm impressed at! When I was doing it we attracted a little gaggle of local girls who wanted to watch and patiently say through most of it looking fascinated bless them! We all went to the little Italian place for dinner which was perched rather precariously on the end of a very rickety and local looking pier - the divide between the touristy/backpacker area of the beach and the local bit was pretty evident in the sudden change in building types, lack of beer signs and much darker and litter strewn sand. The village on the island was run by a chief and all tourism developments, crime or otherwise had to be run through him, which I think is why a lot of the charm of the island had been retained over the last few years, although no doubt a big developer will come along and turn it into some tacky Russian resort - back to the Italian... So it was super rickety and run by a real crazy Italian lady, who's big lacy bra and knickers kept dropping over our shoulders as she came real close to us to the our orders. The second I saw veg risotto on the menu I was some, I didn't even realise that I'd missed it that much but my god it was delish! Bless Christa she had been to the shop and brought us a nice bottle of red wine (Jacobs creek is super class out here!) and we all savoured the yummyness of vino with our dinner :) it was really sad talking to Christa about not seeing her again and she promise promise promised to book her flights to London soon, to come and visit for a month in the Summer which would be awesome. We knew we would be very sad though the following day when we got on the boat, having said goodbye then to both Helen and Christa on the island. After dinner we went back to our hostel bar and settled on the really comfy seats outside as the girls played cards whilst I unintentionally fell asleep in the chair! The girls told me to head to bed and Christa decided to do the same. Lora, Al, Alice and Kate wandered up the beach to look for another bar for a nightcap but found that everything was closed, so they followed us shortly to bed, a sleep we all desperately needed!

I was up early the following morning for a FaceTime date with my boy, 5:30am to be precise and by the time I'd gotten settled in a comfy chair with a beautiful view of the sunrise over the sea, that I would share with him over the phone, I realised there was no wifi and after stamping my feet a bit to the bloke at reception he told me that the generators only work between 6-12pm. Gggrrrrr so annoying! I watched the sunrise alone and traipsed back to bed for another hour before getting up and having to pack and check out of our bungalow. In the end the bungalow worked out quite cheap between the three of us - $15 for two nights which was quite average across the island but for much s***ter huts. Although we did over hear the staff say that no more guests could be checked in because of the "water situation". Although we'd had running water in our room, we were one of only very few bungalows still with water in our big tanks and none of the empty ones could be refilled as the largest master water tank had been run completely dry and the only way to get new water was to wait until it rained. Fat chance in the hottest and dryest two months of the year! We said our last goodbyes to Christa over a choco pancake breakfast and we all boarded the boat back to then mainland. It was quite emosh! The boat back to Sihanoukville was very hot and long than I had thought and so although I put some sun cream on my shoulders and face on the boat I still managed to get pretty burnt on my back, with a funny sun cream line and on my legs of all places! The boat must have been row or three hours and we used the time to look at the Lonely planet guides and plan our time around Koh Kong (our next stop, Cambodia and then Laos).

Arriving in Sihanoukville we were dropped off in the main town centre, serendipity beach, which is meant to be the kind of grotty Tenerife type place. Which it was, but we decided that as we were only planning on staying for one night and catching and early bus to Koh Kong in the morning that we didnt need to trek with all our bags to another beach further away, essentially just for the afternoon. So we checked into the Led Zephyr hostel, dumped our bags and booked our bus out of Sihanoukville all within record breaking speed for us dillydallying lot! Then we jumped in a tuktuk and headed over to Otres beach - the nice one - and say down for lunch. Again I totally wasn't hungry but didn't want to get out of eating synch, so I had a veggie burger with chips and salad which was really tasty :) we sunbathed, mooched and swam in the wee temperatured sea all afternoon which was really chilled, although we all had burnt on the boat and we had to suncream up our red bits! We spent quite a lot of time looking at our route and timings through both Laos and India, which started hammering home both the facts that we are tight on time through Laos, when the 30 hour bus between the south and the north is taken into consideration; and that India is getting very close now and then that will be the end of our trip. Thinking about the end of our trip brings a really mixed bag of feelings... Of course I'm über excited to come home and see my family, boyf, friends and enjoy silly luxuries like being able to sit on a toilet seat or have a bowl of cereal and soy mi afternoon if I want to! But then at the same time I have really enjoyed my experiences across on the other side of the world and have met so many lovely people that I will be sad to leave. It'll probably take some adjusting not to being with the girls all day everyday for the last six months odd too!!

From the beach we had a quick bite to eat for dinner, quite late in the evening, I had beans on toast which was incredible! And then we all chilled charging our electronics, using the Internet and researching our plans for Koh Kong. As we'd come straight from the beach and all quite down on money after a bit of island canning we decided just to chill in our bar and not inflict any more poor souls to our smelly and grubbiness! I went to bed about 2am and was up bright and breezy the next morning (farting like a trooper - thanks beans) to catch our 8am bus to Koh Kong, which turned out to be a bit of a nightmare... But more of that in the next blog!!