Camping Koh Rong - Fish with Wings

09 Mar Camping Koh Rong

Posted at 01:49h in Blog, Personal, Travel by Mallory 1 Comment

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Just a brief interlude here: I am writing about Angkor Wat and Phnom Penh separately since I only spent one day in each place, so there is a brief gap in my story. Sorry! I promise it’s less long and boring this way!

Wow. Just…wow. I have so many things to say about this island. The thing is, I didn’t actually DO a whole lot! I was traveling with Cris and Feli from the school in Lolei, and we had met with Cris’s friend Atamar in Siem Reap. They were going to Koh Rong and I decided to tag along. Why not? I had no real plans. When we finally got there and I saw it was all sandy beaches and parties I was worried. I thought I would be terribly bored. But I decided not to concern myself with that and just appreciate it for what it is. Maybe I could work on that thing people talk about…yeah, you know…relaxing? But it turns out I was not bored at all. There were some things to do, but it was mostly the people I spent time with that made this place truly memorable to me.

So let’s start from the beginning…

Sihanoukville

After an exhausting day at Angkor Wat, we got on a night bus to Sihanoukville for 10$. It was crazy! It wasn’t the recliner chairs that I had become accustomed to, but full on beds! Tiny beds…that if you don’t have a traveling partner you could be sharing with a creepy stranger…but we had an even number, so it worked out great for us. We arrived in Sihanoukville at the butt-crack of dawn and waved away the hassling tuk tuk drivers, walking towards where we thought the pier was. We sat at a gas station to freshen up and figure out where we were heading.

Our original plan was to head to some place called the ‘autonomous pier’ and try to catch a cargo ferry to the island. Supposedly these take a lot longer, but are only 5-7$ each way, instead of the speed ferry fee of 22$ round trip. Ten dollars is a big savings if it works. Turns out the pier was about 2 miles away, and there was a tuk tuk driver hanging out nearby still trying to get us to ride with him and hassling us every few minutes. He said he would take us to the pier for 1$ per person (4$ total), and that if it didn’t work out he would take us to the other pier, so we grudgingly decided to go for it to save some time and energy. Ta mai la? Why not?

Before hopping onto the tuk tuk we pointed out the pier multiple times, and discussed the name and what we wanted to make sure he understood. We thought we were all on the same page…First, he took us to a tourist agency. We said no, we don’t want to go here we want to go to the pier. He said you buy ticket here, then to the pier, so Cris went inside to talk to the guy and ask him about the cargo ferry tickets. He kept trying to sell her the speed boat tickets and even though he mentioned a slow boat and there were signs on the wall that advertised a slow boat, he then said no more slow boat. What the fuck? So she came back and we told the driver again we just want to go to the pier we showed you. He said ok and took us to another agency. We didn’t even go inside – just repeated the pier. So he took us down the road to the speed boat pier, NOT the pier we showed him on the map.

By this time we were seriously pissed that he was ignoring the deal we had agreed on and he started driving us back to where we had started. He was on his phone a lot and when we stopped another, much larger, man took our driver’s place and he said this new guy would take us to the pier. After all of this we were not comfortable and didn’t understand why we were switching drivers so we stepped off of the tuk tuk. When we explained why we were uncomfortable the original driver got very angry and started yelling, almost hit Cris, threw his map and just thoroughly freaked out, then suddenly was calm and said ‘ok you no pay, it’s ok’. So we walked up to an agency, warily keeping an eye on the driver who still hadn’t left, and asked them about the ferry. This guy was extremely helpful and even called a couple of places for us (he had seen the tuk tuk debacle). He determined that slow boats are no longer official and taking one would basically be a bribe. We would have to go directly to the pier to negotiate that, which was our original plan.

Our friend the tuk tuk driver was still hanging around giving us the evil eye, which freaked us out, so we started walking and very deliberately ignored him. As we were walking, Feli had the revelation that she’s only going to be able to spend two days on the island if we take the slow boat because it takes several hours to get there. So for her benefit we decided to blow the extra money on the speed boat…and had to walk back to the pier that the crazy tuk tuk driver had originally taken us to. I was beyond frustrated at this point – not by the change of plans, but by the constant harassing of tuk tuks! Every single one slowed down to follow us for a while, not taking ‘no’ for an answer. At one point our first driver came out of nowhere yelling at us saying ‘you no pay, you no leave!’ He had been following us! We got out our phones to call the tourist police, because this had gone too far, but when Cris tried to take a picture of him he ran off again.

Needless to say, we eventually got our speedboat tickets for 22$ and headed directly to the boat. Sihanoukville left a bitter taste in my mouth and I was glad to leave. We were exhausted, hungry, and irritated, but at last on our way to paradise.

Tropical Paradise

We disembarked at Koh Toch Beach and walked through the sand to a shady tree where we dropped our things and had a late lunch. We had heard from Facu that there were people camping on the next beach over for free, and we intended to find them! We walked all the way down the beach and followed a path through a few resorts, a couple of small beaches, and some well tended jungle to 4K Beach. We did some exploring of the area and asked around, but it seems in order to actually camp for free you would have to go into the jungle and hunt for a spot, or pitch on an area of sand covered in roots, or head to even farther beaches. That didn’t appeal to us so much. At the second restaurant on the beach, The White Pearl, we could pitch our tents for 2$ per night and there’s a bathroom on site. SOLD.

Once our tents were set up and we had played in the ocean for a bit I headed back to Koh Toch to explore. I found a few grocery markets and was told about Sigi’s Thai Food, where I had an incredibly delicious green curry for 5$. Pricey, but worth every bite. We had a fire in the evening where we passed around some Khmer whisky ($2.50 a bottle!) with coke and sang and played the ukulele. The next day we hiked all the way down 4K beach, picking fresh cashew fruit along the way for snacks, and followed a trail to Coconut Beach. Feli had some friends there that she wanted to see and the beach is supposed to be beautiful. It was a long, hot hike for the middle of the day, but we passed through several beaches that were both sad (because of all the trash) and lovely.

Coconut Beach was all it was hyped up to be. White sand, loaded coconut trees, clean water, and clean beaches! No piles of trash at the tide line. Feli rendezvoused with her friends and we all went swimming. We jumped into the water from the pier and I did my first front flip! It was an awesome day, and everything was so peaceful there. We had what they call a talking circle where we talked about the best part of our day, had a couple of drinks, then went back to the water at 10pm to see the phosphorescent plankton!!!!

This is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen!! We waded into the water until it was dark enough, and all of a sudden they were everywhere! You can’t see them unless you disturb the water, as it’s an excitatory reaction, so you wave your hands under the water and they light up like fairy dust! By excitatory reaction I basically mean that we were consistently scaring the shit out of these poor little planktons, but it was incredible. I felt like a water nymph, or like I was flying through the galaxies, or like a super hero ninja. Or maybe…ALL THREE AT ONCE!? I can dream.

On Feli’s last day they hiked to Long Beach in the morning and I joined them later. The hike starts at the top of Sky Bar on Koh Toch beach. You climb the million steep steps to the bar, walk through it, and there’s the path! The beginning is a bit overgrown with grasses, then you walk through a cashew tree forest, and then there is a steep rocky climb down to the beach. I met a German girl and her father who kept me company on the trek. Long beach was also gorgeous, and unique in that I hardly saw any business there. Two small restaurants were tucked away from the shore, but it does look like they are building something big so I assume a resort will be coming soon. I caught up with my friends and we went for a swim and headed back. We sent Feli off at the pier, grabbed some cheap dinner at Nice Foods, which is maybe the cheapest place to eat on the island, and I headed back to the tent.

At the campsite there is a group of people who have been living on the island for a long while. It turns out most of them travel long term and sell jewelry or other crafts to fund their lives. They met and banded together at camp so they could pool resources and cook cheaper meals as a group. There were several from Argentina, two from Italy, one from Croatia, and one from Egypt. I had helped cook lunch with them earlier that day, and I ran into Daniella again in the evening. We went to check out the big Monday night party at The Nest. It took me a minute to get back into the party groove, but after seeing some of my new friends and having a few drinks it was easy enough!

I spent the next few days in a tranquil haze. I think the fact that I didn’t have a phone charger helped. There was no way for me to waste time with social media, or even know what time it was. I was waking up early, watching the sun rise from my tent, doing yoga and light exercise, cleaning up a section of the beach, making my muesli, milk, and banana breakfast, swimming, sun bathing, having late lunch with my neighbors, then walking to town to refresh my groceries. I met more traveling craftsmen on the street who play latin music, stopped to say hello at my friends’ stalls, and started practicing Spanish and learning a few new jewelry knots myself. I sewed my backpack straps back together and even made an entire home cooked meal on the fire by myself. [Note: I am extremely proud of this, as I don’t think I’ve ever started a lasting fire in my life, much less maintained one while chopping and cooking. Plus the food was delicious. But I made it, so of course it was ;)] It was not unproductive time, yet I’ve never felt so relaxed and at ease.

One night Atamar, Cris, and I started a fire and decided to try roasting the cashew nuts we had been collecting from the fruiting trees. I had bought a pan in Sihanoukville and we tossed some cashews in and placed them in the fire. The roasting process is both much simpler and much more difficult than we imagined. The raw nuts have a casing with a toxic substance inside, so you’re basically burning the outside to remove the casing, but trying not to burn the nut on the inside. I was the official cashew crusher, wielding my brick with pride. We kept thinking we would get better at timing the roasting process, but from about 30 nuts total we only got 4 perfect ones. But perfect they were, and that nut and a half is the best cashew I’ve ever tasted!

Another night I was talked into going to a full moon party – it was expensive at $10, but it was combined with the opening night of the fire festival and was supposed to be an awesome show. It wasn’t quite what I expected, but it was still a blast. The techno trance was undanceable, but there were all sorts of fire spinners and breathers. There were people with poi, staffs, hula hoops, claws, dragon staffs, even single flames for your hand. And it went All. Night. Long. I sat and watched the sun rise with my friend, ate a yogurt fruit bowl at Happy Luna’s (incredible), and spent the rest of the day walking around like a zombie.

On my birthday I had no special plans. I thought I would head to Koh Toch and get a nice meal, read my book, write in my journal. Splurge a bit on food and snacks. I ended up running into Victor (I don’t know how, but I ran into him at practically every corner!), and he invited me to go sea kayaking with him and his friends. Uh, YES! We packed up some whiskey and coke and set sail for the nearest island, a tiny outcrop with a buddhist shrine. As soon as we made it to shore a small boy asks excitedly, ‘beer?’ They teach them young, they do… We walked around observing the shrine, picking up sea shells, and skipping rocks, then headed back. We were basically eco-pirates, swigging Cambodian whisky, singing songs, and collecting trash from the ocean. That night they got a couple more bottles of whisky and we spent all evening getting completely smashed while playing Picolo, which is some hilarious drinking game app. Despite the booze, it was an unforgettable night.

After another lazy day or two it was time to get my ass moving to Phnom Penh. I had another final amazing evening at camp where my friends were celebrating more birthdays and saying multiple goodbyes. They played latin music long into the night. I got up early and trekked back to Koh Toch beach to catch the ferry, bought a ticket for $7 to Phnom Penh, and here I am! The next episode of my life is soon to follow: Wrapping up in Cambodia. Stay tuned! 😉