Sihanoukville

The way to the Cambodian islands goes through Sihanoukville. As it is quite a large city, we were initially planning to stay here for several nights, but after talking to some locals we changed our mind and minimized our stay there, and were quite glad of that decision after seeing the city.

Named after an important figure in Cambodian history, king Sihanouk (more about him is under our upcoming history section), the town is now under Chinese control with huge buildings, and about 100 casinos mainly with Chinese customers and more than 90% of the business in the city being Chinese-owned. As we understand, it is not a very much liked town by the locals and this feeling goes hand in hand with the attitude they have towards Chinese.

Koh Rong island

Going to Prek Svay village

From Sihanoukville, we took the supply boat that carries food, drinks, fuel, motorbikes and people to the island, making several stops on the way.

After 3h of travel, we reached finally the village, our arrival as the sun was going down was quite exciting!

Our stay

Here is our house as seen from the outside:

And from the inside, we had some hammocks to chill during the day! Hammocks are like the official furniture of Cambodia, in front of houses, in shops, banks, even in tuk-tuks we saw people resting in hammocks.

In the village and in our house, there was no tap water and all day electricity (there is only electricity from a generator working between 6 and 10 pm everyday). Non drinking water is carried with buckets from outside, we were boiling the water to handwash our clothes and do the dishes. We could even cook camping-style!

The village

The village is a very cute one, quite local, we were not seeing many tourists around, here was the view from our room:

In the village, no much is happening, but we found the most active spot, a stand of sandwiches and meat sticks with some tables, there we met various people, including a group with whom we shared drinks and food. They didn’t know English but we understood each other. From them, we learned the word សប្បាយ (sabbay), which means “have fun” :)

And another view from the river:

Not all is beautiful though, we could see a lot of trash around, an interesting thing is that while we saw a lot of signs asking tourists to not throw away anything in nature, we actually saw locals doing so into the sea during the boat travel:

What we saw on the island

Long beach

Taking a motorcycle, we could explore the whole island and reach various beaches. These have amazingly fine white sand, which feels and sounds like snow when we walk on it! One of them we like in particular, called long beach, for its secluded aspect, out of everything.

But it is important to remind that beauty is a matter of perspective:

Prek Tasok Ecotourism Community

We visited a nice conservation project of a mangrove forest, a perfect place to escape the heat of the day:

Mangroves play an important role in stabilizing coastlines and river mouths, protecting them from erosion.

Some interesting popping sounds could be heard, which can be probably attributed to some mud-burrowing bivalves (similar to mussels and clams) doing some work in low tides.

The river of the village

We made a small kayak excursion on the river going through our village. We went around the mangrove, and saw beautiful blue-coloured birds and abandoned ships:

The upcoming airport…

One dark side of the island, which we were seeing every time we travelled around, was the field of the upcoming airport, named Koh Rong International Eco-Tourism (nope it is not a joke) Airport. Yes, you heard well, on this small island, an airport is going to be built… A large zone had been flatted and completely cleaned from trees:

Following the building frenzy of Sihanoukville, and after Chinese-backed infrastructure construction on the island, we leave you to think about the impact of this “eco-tourism” airport on this small island.