Day 116 – Koh Rong to Sihanoukville to Siem Reap.

We had to check out by 9am, so we dumped all our bags downstairs and went for breakfast. Once again we went to Cocos. The upstairs is just a big open space looking out over the water, so beautiful. It was a good choice to sit up here undercover as not that long after it started to rain. It made the place feel so much cooler but the sun came back out soon enough. I spent the whole day up there sorting out the last few things for this adventure, choosing to eat lunch up there and just generally relaxing. We got the fast boat back to the mainland at 4pm and walked back to Monkey Republic in the hunt for a shower. 

The entire time on Koh Rong the place we were staying had no water, needless to say we were all desperate to feel a bit cleaner! In luck we found one and by that I mean just the one but we all managed to shower just in time to jump on our overnight ‘hotel bus’ to Siem Reap, which picked us up at 7pm. The bus was laid out with double bed bunk beds, I think that’s the one way I can describe it. I shared with Chrissy of course and we had more room than we thought we were going to have. Chrissy could lay down flat and only just touch the end, so it’s longer than any of the other buses we’ve been on so far. It seems like Cambodians are bigger than Vietnamese, even if it is only a few inches.

Day 115 – Koh Rong Boat Tour.

We got up about 10am and went for breakfast at Monkey Island, I needed another one of those chocolate milkshakes in my life! When we left here we chilled on the beach before jumping on the Koh Rong Dive Center boat tour at 2pm. We knew this tour was going to be good no matter what as there was the 11 of us from the stranded bus incident plus a couple of other people we had spoken to on the island. First stop was at Koh Kong for a spot of snorkelling, there were loads of sea erchants but that was about it, quite a disappointing spot compared to what we saw in Nha Trang.

We then left here and moved a bit further out for a spot of fishing. It was more a plastic tube with wire around it, none of this fancy rod business. I have never been fishing before but some how I managed to be the first person to catch a fish! It was only a little thing but still, I DID IT! We were probably there for about 45minutes and only 3 fish were caught out of 30 or so people.

A short boat ride away and we had arrived at the 7km Long Beach with it’s pure white sands and really clear water, just beautiful. We were here for just over an hour to watch the sunset and oh my was it amazing, I know it’s all about the memories but it’s times like that I’m gutted my camera is broken, I did take a couple of snaps on my phone when I got back on the boat but it just doesn’t do it justice.

For dinner we were given a chicken skewer thing from the BBQ with salad, it was pretty awful but that’s because it’s not my kind of thing, I still ate it of course. We arrived back on the mainland around 9pm, overall the boat trip was quite fun!

Day 114 – Koh Rong.

Seeing as we missed our boat yesterday we got the first fast boat of the day, which was at 8am. We arrived in Koh Rong about 9am but had nowhere to stay. There was a welcome talk at Cocos so we listened to that and looked at their breakfast menu at the same time. We crashed upstairs whilst a couple of people went out to find somewhere for the 8 of us to stay. There was room in Bunna Place a few doors down. We all had double rooms and although this island is beautiful it does mean that there isn’t a lot of running water and electricity is only on for a few hours a day. The bed was comfy so I was happy!

We went straight to the beach and into the water, which was needed, April is the hottest month here and it was bloody boiling! Stayed in there for a lot of the day, came out around lunchtime for a milkshake in Monkey Island, then went back in again until late afternoon. We also met two guys from Porsmouth, small world! Obviously we couldn’t shower, so we just dried off and changed for dinner. We were going to go to the old village for dinner but we didn’t make it that far before settling down at cocos. Our stranded bus crew came together for the evening playing games and chilling on the beach. Survived the evening without getting bitten, yay!

Day 113 – Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville to Koh Rong (or not).

The bus and boat we wanted weren’t available so we had to go for the next best option, which probably turned out to be the worst option! We were picked up at 8am for the 8.45 bus to Sihanoukville. The bus wasn’t the best and the aircon was terrible but it was better than nothing at all. We arrived at a café around 11.30am. Emily, Cara, Chrissy and I decided we’d just wait on the bus, the driver came on and told us we needed to get off so we asked him how long we were going to be here and he said 10minutes. A bit of time passed and we hit 45minutes since arriving so one of the girls from the bus decided to go and find him and ask. He said 3, she said 3 minutes? He said no, 3! 3 o’clock? He said no, 3 mountains. She walks back to us completely confused. We gave him 5 more minutes before walking over in a big group to get this sorted. His English was terrible and so he found a woman who could speak both languages to tell us what was going on. Apparently the electrics on the bus were broken and we were waiting for another one, obviously he never planned to tell us this and it was convenient we made it the whole way to the rest stop! We refused to buy anything in this place and eventually had a new bus with us at about 1.30!

We didn’t get to Sihanoukville until 5pm meaning we had missed the last boat to Koh Rong and had to stay a night on the mainland instead.

Once again the bus dropped us outside and we needed tuk tuks to get in. There were 11 of us by this point so we got a good deal and got them to take us to the only place we had heard of. Luckily Monkey republic had the exact amount of beds we needed. The room may have had no windows or air con and felt like a sauna but it was a bed for the night. We also rebooked our boat and sorted out our bus to go to Siem Reap, so although the day didn’t go to plan it worked out alright in the end.