We left Kampot on the sketchiest bus yet. By sketchy I mean dodgy and by dodgy I mean overbooked, cramped and hot!! We were in a minibus and rather than save any room for baggage, every single available space had a seat in it to squeeze more people in. So where does our baggage go? Under us, on us, around us… EVERYWHERE!! Let’s just say that we were glad to get to Sihanoukville after the 2.5 hour drive. We had decided not to stay in Sihanoukville as we heard it was disappointing and touristy, so we headed straight over to Koh Rong Samloem on a 45 minute speedboat.

When we arrived we were greeted with the most beautiful water we have ever seen. It was just such a beautiful turquoise colour. We were very fortunate to be spending 2 nights at Sweet Dreams Samloem, which was a great little hotel, which also served great food. The next few days were spent swimming in the gorgeous water, sunbathing, eating and just loving life. This place is truly magical and if you are in Cambodia and don’t come here, you are missing out!!

View from our bungalow

Yes, this is the police station

On our last evening, we walked to the other side of the island through the jungle. It was about a 45 minute walk and it was super hot and humid, but what awaited us on the other side was an absolutely breathtaking sunset. We watched it from the water as we needed to cool off anyway. They don’t call it sunset beach for nothing. Our walk back was… um… interesting. As we watched the sunset, it was pretty dark walking back through the jungle, but we survived!

The next day we had a 12:30pm ferry over to Koh Rong, the more commercialised island and WOW what a difference it was. Luckily, we had booked accommodation away from the main pier/backpacker area of Koh Tuich Village. This is pretty fortunate as I think I would have gone crazy staying in this area. Our accommodation was just a short walk, or swim, from 4k beach. A beautiful stretch of beach that reminded us of Sacrean Bay on Koh Rong Samloem. On our way to our accommodation we met a lovely Cornish couple, Gina and Ben, who were also staying at the same bungalow complex. We quickly made friends and spent the next few days together, eating, chilling, swimming and exploring. We had so much fun, we hardly took any photos.

This pizza is bigger than my head…

4k beach

We had booked to go on an all day island cruise trip, which would take us to some National Parks for snorkelling, back to the other side of Koh Rong Samloem and also to swim with the bioluminescent phytoplankton. After preparing for the trip and walking back into town for the departure time, they cancelled it. We’re 90% sure they cancelled due to hangovers, but claimed it was due to numbers, even though there were 8 of us waiting to go. However, they did give us a refund and booked us on to the phytoplankton part of that tour later in the evening. Swimming with the phytoplankton was great. We jumped into the pitch black abyss and as soon as you started to move your hands around the plankton gave off bioluminescence. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. The problem is, I had gotten it into my head that it would look like Avatar or like it did in the Life of Pi. It didn’t. The light they gave off was far more white, but equally as interesting to see.

After 3 night on Koh Rong, we were ready to leave the islands for a bit. The mozzies had decided to munch on me again despite multiple applications of DEET, drinking tonic water, eating as much garlic as possible and wearing excess amounts of clothes in 80% humidity. Despite this, we still had a great time. Sorry this is quite a short blog, but really we didn’t do a lot except read, swim and relax. The photos can show you what it’s like better than me rambling on!