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