They Eat (and get eaten in)... Koh Rong
Koh Rong is an island 25 kilometers from Sihanoukville in Southern Cambodia. While it only takes 30 minutes fast ferry to get here from the city, most of the island is still relatively untouched by tourism. Blogs talk about the pristine beaches, but google “sand flies koh rong” and our worst nightmare is described.
This post is a bit longer than the others, so feel free to use these links to go straight to the content you are interested in:
Where We Stayed - Pagoda Beach
Pagoda Beach is just over half a mile long with five small resorts along the beach. We hardly had any mobile reception, but both resorts we visited had decent internet.
You only need to walk 2 minutes to get from your room to the water. We stayed at two of the hotels (Anaya and Sweet Dreams). Both are fairly new (less than one year) as are all the other developments on this beach. The area is incredibly remote and only the beach and the resorts are within walking distance. There are no local shops or restaurants which aren’t part of the hotels.
Our time at Sweet Dreams was particularly fantastic. Our room had beachfront views where the doors had some type of reflector on it - we could see out but people couldn’t see in (unless it was nighttime and we had our lights on).
The Food (how can we not cover this!)
We found food at both hotel restaurants to be delicious and well priced considering we were a captive audience (under $10 for a dish, $15-20 for a bottle of wine). Rooms are new, modern and most importantly: clean. At Sweet Dreams, the menu had BBQ at night and we enjoyed their take on burgers and local dishes for lunch. Most spectacular was their red snapper with fried rice. At Anaya, we had their chicken curry pizza for two dinners and one lunch - we just couldn’t get enough of it.
Bring Enough Clean Clothes
The water has high minerality at Pagoda Beach and the island hasn’t yet set up enough filtration to have on-site laundry. Everything gets laundered in Sihanoukville on the mainland so the resorts don’t provide a laundry service. Being longer term travelers, we arrived with a bag of dirty clothes and it took 2 full days for it to come back to us after special request to our hotel. The rest of the time, we just lived in our bathing suits.
If it hasn’t become clear yet, let us confirm that our five nights on Pagoda Beach were spent swimming in the water, eating, drinking, and just taking naps. That is what you go to Pagoda Beach for - a true break from the busy world.
Scooters at Our Risk
We decided to rent scooters for half a day and explore the rest of Koh Rong island. It was $15 ($20 if you want it for a full day) and we were given a full warning: “no insurance, no license, you hurt yourself, your problem, you hurt the bike, your problem”. We were given one helmet between the four of us. Somehow, we still braved it and were rewarded with bumpy roads but gorgeous scenery.
Koh Touch - Going back to our 20s
We arranged for a private charter boat ($100 for 4 of us) - sounds more glamorous than it was as it really was just a fishing boat with a ton of character. The captain (an 8 year old kid) took us snorkeling, down to Koh Touch, and then a stop at Long Set Beach before sunset. The snorkeling visibility was quite good and there was lots of coral and fish to see. It wasn’t very deep so you could easily touch the coral by mistake. When we arrived at Koh Touch, we were shocked by how busy it was given our time on remote Pagoda Beach. Loud music, lots of backpackers, and many bars with tables right on the beach for you to drink and enjoy the waves. Our friend described it as, “exactly where I would want to be if i was in my mid-20s”. Ian was especially happy seeing a hut selling beers and cocktails. We sat down, enjoyed the waves and views, but were happy this was just for one hour before we headed back to our secluded paradise.
Please be careful if you arrange a private boat. The captain asked us for money and luckily, the hotel told us this would likely happen. They already paid him and he has a history of asking in case we don’t realize. Unfortunately, there aren’t many operators so the hotel doesn’t really have much of a choice to direct their business elsewhere.
Sand Flies Everywhere (saving the worst for last)
Unfortunately, there is one major negative to life in Koh Rung and they are the sand flies. I never actually saw these teeny tiny bugs, but they sure saw us and ate us to their stomach’s delight. We were getting bitten not only sitting on the beach, but swimming in the water as well. We used DEET 30% spray and then also learned that these suckers really hate coconut oil - so we began to apply it all over ourselves: double perk - wards off these flies and is naturally moisturizing! If you might be quite allergic as well, make sure to wear long-sleeve rash t-shirts and leggings when you go in the water - that is where most of the bites came from.
How to Get to Koh Rong
We flew into Phnom Penh (capital of Cambodia) and hired a private taxi to drive 3.5 hours to Kampot for an overnight stay. This town is most famous for growing peppers (more on this another time). It is another 2.5 hours drive to Sihanoukville. We booked the car via Cambodia Taxi Driver and paid USD119 for these two drives. It generally costs USD55-60 to go straight to Sihanoukville. From Sihanoukville, you can either arrange a boat from the main ferry pier if you are headed to Koh Touch. For Pagoda Beach hotels, there is private ferry leaving from Port Autonomous that costs USD20 each way. Make sure you know where your resort is as the island is very large and most are only accessible by boat.
We headed to Koh Rong Samloem after our time here. There is a public taxi that goes first to Long Set Beach then transfer to another boat - about 3 hours in total for this journey. We decided to arrange a private boat taxi which would only take 45 minutes to go direct. Three other people from our hotel were also headed there so we split the bill. It was originally $90 for two of us. The boat captain raised the price to $170 - arguing he had to use a larger boat, the waves were choppy, and more fuel. In reality, he didn’t even know we had more people till he arrived so he was just making stuff up. We were able to negotiate down to $120. Be mindful of this if you go this route.
