Where and when: Koh Rong Island, Cambodia, April 2023
0930: Walk down Pagoda beach and a dip in the sea followed by a leisurely breakfast. As the tide is out, the beach extends even further than yesterday.
1300: After a leisurely morning, we decide to spend the afternoon exploring the island. The hotel offers half-day trips around the island with a private car and a driver for 40 USD. Full day trips cost 80 USD.
1315: First stop on the island tour is the Prek Koang Kang Ecotourism Community. This is a tourist attraction built around the island’s mangroves.
You can explore the mangroves on foot using a wooden walkway along the river. The path takes you all the way to the estuary and the sea front.
Alternatively, you can rent a kayak for a few dollars and explore the mangroves by water.
There are also small wooden pavilions along the way, where you can rest and relax or have a picnic. The mangroves are dense and cool and provides a perfect oasis during the mid-day heat.
Tip: If you are doing the half-a-day island tour, the Prek Koang Kang mangroves are a great place to have a picnic or lunch. So I suggest starting or ending your tour here and having lunch.
Our next stop is at Sok San Beach and village.
This was one of the original resorts on the island and used for filming the TV programme “survivor”. It is a busy, touristy area with mid-range hotels.
Climbing the hill on the end of the beach provides great views over the bay.
Next, we stop at Koh Touch beach – this is the main tourist area of the island and provides cheap accomodation, food and lively bars – there is a party atmosphere – even during the day. There are many small shops selling tourist essentials.
Our last stop for the tour is Long Beach. This is a large beach stretching for a couple of kilometers either side. It is on the west side of the island, great for watching sunsets. The water is deeper and less calm compared to Pagoda beach – nevertheless great for swimming.
Although Koh Rong have a reputation as party island, we found that this is not the case at all. The lively atmosphere is confined to the main beach Koh Touch – many of the other beaches offer a rustic idyll.
The island whilst home to many hotels, is not over-developed and retains much of its original charm. The roads are small, the locals are friendly and it feels like you are far away from the rest of the world.
1615: Tour over, we are back at the hotel. What was clear from our trip was the pace of developement around the island. A new port developement is well underway on the and an international airport has also been announced. Whilst these will make the island more accessible, I couldn’t help thinking that it will also mean the loss of its charm.
There is time for a paddle and a dip in the sea and a snack before our next adventure.
1900: Tonight we are going out to the ocean to see bio-luminous plankton. I had seen many pictures of this phenomenon before, but never had the chance to see it for myself.
The boat picks us up from the hotel (Our hotel doesn’t have its own pier, so we need to wade out into the sea, knee deep, to get into the boat).
After we have boarded, the boat maneuvers around, stops to pickup few more passengers along the beach and heads to a bay where there is no light at all.
A little bit about bio-luminecent plankton- A chemical reaction in marine plankton emits light which makes the sea luminous. As this reaction is used to evade predators and acts as a defence mechanism, it only occurs when the plankton is being stressed. Therefore, in very calm waters it is only visible when the water moves, i.e. by swimming, moving and swirling the water. The plankton emits light when the waves break on the beach, but as the light is only visible to the naked eye in completely dark surroundings, it is rare to see it on a beach.
The boat stops in the middle of the bay, and we step out into the water. (It takes a bit of a leap of faith to get off the boat in the middle of the ocean into the pitch dark). But the water is warm, only waist deep and the sea bed is clear and sandy. The crew turns the light off on the boat and we swim out – and this is when the magic happens. With each disturbance in the water, hundreds of thousands of tiny lights illuminate the water around us. The plankton rests on our arms, legs and clothes and light up like underwater fire flies.
The plankton can be seen only when you move and given the light intensity, only you can see the plankton surrounding you, making it a truly unique experience.
Unfortunately, the phone camera is not good enough to capture the plankton. One of our group had an underwater camera and even this couldn’t capture the plankton. So apologies, I have to use some free istock images here.
After swimming and moving around in the water for about 45 minutes, we head back.
Tip: If you are going to see the plankton, take a swimming costume, a good camera (with long exposure) and towels. If you wear glasses, make sure to take these and snorkles of your have them.
2015: Back to hotel and dinner.
Diary of a Tourist 