Koh Rong - Cambodia's best kept secret

There's nothing like arriving at the airport 24 hours early for your flight. Yes, the day we thought we were due to fly from Siem Reap to Sihanoukville, which was to be our jump point to the Cambodian islands, was actually a day later that we'd thought. We only realised our blunder when the check-in clerk looked at us blankly and said, "Tomorrow." And unfortuately, it transpired that today's flight was full. Until we bribed the check-in clerk with $40 USD and two seats miraculously became available. Good old 'Asia Tax' saved the day and off we went.

Sihanoukville is pretty much the Phuket of Cambodia - a lively beach resort with hotels and girly bars aplenty. The wide sandy beach is crammed with beach bars and loungers, the hawkers are relentless asking everyone if they want massages, manicures, pedicures, friendship bracelets and fruit. Given our airport error, we have found ourselves with an extra day to kill before we caught the ferry to Koh Rong island. So we take a tuk-tuk to Otres Beach, 7km away from Sihanoukville. Its a pretty stretch of sand that mainly plays host to backpackers and the like, a very chilled out vibe - loungers and satellite chairs line the sand and cheap beer is flowing. 

Next day, we board the fast ferry to Koh Rong. Koh Rong is the reason most backpackers end up in Sihanoukville. From the photos, it looks amazing - white sand, deserted beaches, turqoise sea. In real life it is a desert island paradise. The crossing out to the island used to take 2 hours by boat, but now a fast ferry gets you there in 40 minutes. As we board the boat, I clock several dreadlocked backpackers toting guitars. Stef and I start making bets as to how long it will be until someone starts strumming Redemption Song. We are definitely, once again, straying into Eat Pray Love territory. But that's fair enough - most Western tourists don't make it as far as Koh Rong. And as we discovered, more fool them.

As we approach the island it looks long and narrow, with a mountainous jungle interior. We jump off at the pier on the main beach - which is nothing more than a few beach bars and restaurants lined up along the sand, and a cluster of bungalows. This is where the backpackers jump off. We then take a water taxi around the headland to where we are staying - the remotest beach on the island, Sonaya Beach. We moor up at a rickety old jetty and our mouths drop open. Sonaya Beach is a perfect curve of powder white, squeak-when-you-walk sand. It overlooks several teeny scattered islands and also Koh Rong Samloem, Koh Rong's neighbour and little sister. The sea is a crystal turqoise and there is no one else in sight, apart from a single tent further along the beach. We have ventured into Robinson Crusoe territory.

Our accomodation, called Pura Vita is rustic even by Cambodian standards. Pura Vita is a smattering of six bamboo and thatch bungalows set a few meters back from the beach. There is no hot water. In fact, there is no fresh water, showers are salt water all the way. There is no wifi and they only have electricity for 4 hours a day. Yes, it's remote. And it is totally perfect. We spend the days swimming in the calm clear water that is as warm as a bath. Or lounging on the powdery sand. Occaisionally, another tourist will venture past - having walked the 2km trek through the jungle that it takes to access our beach from town. The place is run by a lady called Vanny. At night in the tiny restaurant she serves up fresh caught fish or squid with Kampot pepper sauce or black pepper and lime dressing. At night the plankton in the water glow when the waves crash. It is like having our own private island and the most peaceful place I have ever been to.

Until a camera crew turn up. I'd been thinking for a few days up to this point, how weird it was that there seemed to be quite a few stunningly beautiful, impossibly tanned, yet rather emaciated Eastern europeans with walkies talkies making a daily pilgrimmage to our beach. At the arrival of the camera crew, Vanny explains that the Bulgarian series of Survivor is currently being filmed on one of Koh Rong's unihabited beachs. So the beautiful yet skinny people we've been seeing are the voted off contestants, a bunch of Bulgarian models, kick boxers and general beef cake types. Apparently the camera crew were using our beach as a location for the 'voted off' exit interviews, and suddenly, the whole weird scenario falls into place.

To explore more of the area, we take a snorkelling trip out to one of Koh Rong's unihabited islands. The coral is impressive and the parrot fish plentiful. After that, it's time to go fishing to catch our supper. After two hours I've caught two tiny fish and Stef one slightly larger one. I sense we might be going hungry but thankfully, in that time, our captain has caught enough fish to feed everyone. We put-put round to Long Beach, a fairly similar beach to Sonaya, but's 5km long. It's a truly beautiful place to watch the sunset, as we bobbed on the boat, munching on barbcued fish we'd caught less than an hour earlier. Even the small fry is tasty.

A couple of evenings we walk through the jungle to the main beach to sink a few $1 mai tais and Angkor beers with the teenage backpackers. It is so laid back, no banging bars, no hawkers. Just a lot of smug-looking twenty somethings and the ever-smiling locals who live here. They are right to be smiling because Koh Rong is idyllic. A slice of largely untapped heaven, visited by only a few. It's how I imagine Koh Samui and Koh Phang Nan in Thailand might have been 25 years ago, before they became part of the well-trodden tourist trail and the developers and mega-resorts rolled in.

But Koh Rong might not be Cambodia's best kept secret for long. The island has apparently been sold to a developer to build a luxury resort, complete with golf course. So in a few years time, it sadly, might just become another high-end Maldivian style resort with water villas. Perfectly lovely, but not the unspoit, remote paradise it is at the moment. So the time to visit this peaceful paradise really is right now.

Until the next time,

Beth x

Tomb Raiding in Angkor

It's rare that a hustling, bustling and cosmopolitain city springs up in an utterly random location, like the middle of dense Cambodian jungle. But that is Siem Reap for you. The city has sprung up for one reason only, to give tourists somewhere to relax over a Tomb Raider cocktail after visiting the temples of Angkor, most famously, the Angkor Wat. I'd seen photos of the Wat and surrounding temples in countless magazines and movies - including Tomb Raider which was shot there in 2001. But it wasn't until I arived in Siem Reap that I realised the scale of the wats, and just how many there are. It is insane, the area, now a World Heritage site is 400 square kilometeres and home to hundreds of temples. So much so that the areas is known as one of the Seven Ancient Wonders. At it's heart is the Angkor Wat, a Hindu temple. Built in the 12th century by king Jayavarman VII as a place of pilgrimmage for the ancient Khmers. In his day, the temple was a place of worship. Now, it is his tomb. It is unfinished in places, because the thousands of workers who built it couldn't bear to finish it off without direction from their king after he died.

The guide books weren't lying when they said Angkor Wat was the biggest temple in the world. It is as mind-blowing and epic in scale as it looks in the photos.
We have one full day to visit the Wats and want to cram in as many temples as we can, so we arrange for an English-speaking guide to accompany us. And I'm so glad we did. The Wats are so mystical, covered in bas-reliefs and carvings that all tell the stories of ancient civilisation who built them that without expert knowledge to decipher it all, you are, in essence, screwed. I noticed that all the tourists without guides seem to spend their entire visit leafing through their Rough Guides in bewilderment.

Our tuk-tuk driver and our guide, Mr Meoun, pick us up from our hotel early. We have a big day ahead. We bump along through the dusty tracks of Siem Reap out towards the Wats. I spot a huge river and naively ask the guide what it is called. He smiles knowingly. "That's not a river, that is the moat surrounding the Angkor Wat." he replies. I am stunned. The moat is as wide as the Thames and entirely fed by rainwater. It is only then that I get a sense then of just how epic the Wat is going to be.

At first, we walk along a huge stone bridge over the moat to the gateway. The bridge represents a rainbow, joining the world of humans to the world of the divine. Once we've navigated our way through the hawkers selling t-shirts, postcards and of course, Angkor beer, (the Khmer national drink), I'm stunned by how the entrance of the Wat is impressive in itself. The towering walls are intricately carved with bas-reliefs of the Hindu god Vishnu and his battles. Every now and then we spy bullet holes in the walls - the temple has been the site of several more visceral battles for control in recent history too. There are shrines everywhere - what is amazing about the Angkor Wat is that it is still a place of pilgrimmage for Hindus today.

Through the gates it is a long walk past two ancient libraries before we catch the money-shot, the view of the five towers of the Angkor Wat, black and hazy in the early Cambodian sun. There are hundreds of people already there, but there is plenty of viewing space to go around. It is massive. 

We climb up the towering steps and our guide takes us through the galleries surrounding the inner walls, long corridors featuring the most beautiful sandstone carvings and bas-reliefs, every one telling a story about hinduism - stories that Cambodian school children still learn today. 

At it's heart are the five towers of the Wat. We climb up into the main tower and the view over the jungle and temples is jaw-dropping. Every tower holds a shrine where people are praying and offering gifts of incense to Vishnu. The scent of incense fills the air adding to the mysticism. There are bathing pools and libraries up there too. It is amazing. It's a real 'pinch yourself' moment to be there, seeing such a beautifully preserved mecca to an ancient world. We are there for three hours, the sun high in the sky by the time we leave. 

Back in the tuk tuk, we then drive into the ancient city of Angkor Thom. At three square kilometres it is huge, a hidden world of tumbling majestic temples, buildings, palaces and libraries. To enter the city we pass through the gateway, lined with headless statues. The statues are headless because the Thai army claimed the heads of the statues during a battle in the 15th century. The heads are now housed in a museum in Bangkok, our guide explains, sadly. It is clear there is rivalry between Cambodia and Thailand, it's more developed neighbour. The glitch is that Cambodia relies heavily on Thai investment, so really, at the moment the Khmers have little hope at being reunited with their lost treasures.

We pull up outside Bayon Temple, famous for its huge stone towers carved with smiling Buddha faces. It's much smaller than the Angkor Wat, but unique and beautiful in it's own right. A temple dedicated to both Buddhist and Hindu faiths, where the king tried to create a dual-faith place of worship in the 12th Century. Pretty controversial and ground-breaking stuff by today's standards. We explore the temples, seeking out the winking buddhas. Up close their faces are monolith but happy. Buddha smiles on us everywhere. "You are now face to face with God,' Mr Meoun explains. It is a priviledge to visit such a revered place of pilgrimmage.

Back in the tuk tuk, Mr Meoun also tells us about Camdodia's more infamous past. He explains that his grandmother was one of eight siblings, and she was the only one to survive Pol Pot's regime under the communist rule of the Khmer Rouge. He is clearly moved by the struggles his country has been through to get to where it is today.

As the shadows lengthen into the afternoon we go deeper into the jungle to vist Ta Prohm, the tree temple. Over time, nature has has collapsed the 39 towers of the temple, massive trees roots have climed over the walls and doorways, knocked down walls and balustrades. It is truly breath-taking, a natural wonder. Some of the most photographed trees in the world are at Ta Prohm. Although some restoration work has begun, the Cambodian government have cleverly decided not to remove or restore any of the parts that are covered by the trees and roots. A smart decision, since the whole place has been made so imperfect by nature it is truly perfect to behold. My favourite temple by far. 

We clamber over the collapsed stones, peering through the roots into hidden doorways and windows. We glimpse partially hidden Buddhas and intricately carved bas-reliefs. It has such a mysterious, other-worldly air. Like it is hiding a secret. So it's of little wonder that Ta Prohm was the chosen location for Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie. Our guide proudly shows us the various shot locations, where Ange did her Lara Croft thing. "She also adoppted a Cambodian baby because she loves our country so much," Mr Meoun explains, solemnly. 

Now this definitely feels like my area of expertise. 

"Yes, he's called Maddox!" I say excitedly and Mr Meoun and I then have a lengthy conversation about Brad and Ange, their adoptive brood, how Brad ditched Jen but it was probably for the best. It seems Ange is revered as some kind of sexy Mother Theresa type in Cambodia. They love her and she visits every year apparently, building schools and giving lots of money to charity. 

"She visits people in the most remote, poorest areas," Mr Meoun says, fondly. At which point I ask him where Ange stays when she's in Siem Reap. "Raffles Hotel," Mr Meoun says. 

Ah right, only the most luxe hotel in the region, like a true woman of the people, eh.

But glam Hollywood movies aside, the tree temple is just so peaceful. The perfect place to end a hot, dusty day of temple gazing. Before we head home, Mr Meoun takes us to visit a floating village on Tonle Sap, Asia's biggest lake. It's like an ocean - so vast you can't see land on the other side. As the sun sinks over the floating shacks, schools and shops, the fishing boats set out for their nightly catch. It is just the start of our journey in Cambodia but a real reminder of just what a diverse and beautiful country it is, begging to be explored.

Until the next time...

Love Beth x