August 11th, 2019
We arrived in the morning today via our overnight “hotel bus” to Sihanoukville. This is a coastal town that used to be popular for backpackers because of the beautiful white sand beaches and turquoise water. At one point it was full of beach bungalows and local markets, away from the craziness and hordes of tourists the southern Thai islands were seeing. The secret of this town got out though and became the site for many Chinese investors who put big resorts and strips of casinos. It appears they only invested enough to draw the tourists, and did not reinvest anything to the community or environment as now the town is just destroyed. It is filled with trash (the dirtiest city I have ever seen).
I had read from many bloggers that the popular beaches are now just trash dumps and I believe it, from seeing the inner city we drove through. I made a quick decision that it was not worth staying here and we were able to take a tuk tuk right to the ferry terminal from the bus station. We got on the next ferry going to Koh Rong. Koh Rong is an island 1.5 hours away from Sihanoukville via ferry. The boat served us breakfast which was a nice surprise.
Koh Rong is growing in popularity but still supposed to have some of its charm along with beautiful beaches. I was excited to read that it had a small medical clinic run solely by volunteers. I thought this could be the opportunity I have been looking for to volunteer without it costing me an arm and a leg. As I read further I was sad to see that last year they had to close their doors due to lack of funding and volunteers.
We arrived early afternoon and walked up to the first cute batch of bungalows off the pier where we were dropped off. “Tree House Beach Bungalows” had a vacancy and a private bungalow for $12 a night.
We checked in and set out to explore the beaches and village. I was amazed with how white and beautiful the sand was here. It has been storming on and off and the water was a bit rough. The village was quite primitive, and I could see falling victim to the prospect of tourism dollars without using any money for improvement or maintenance. Our Treehouse bungalow place was really cute though. There are only a few roads here and locals have motorbikes, but you get around by either walking or taking a boat to another beach. In the early evening we took a long walk all the way down one of the beaches until it ended, and there was no more path through the jungle. It rained heavily through the night, so we stayed in our bungalow instead of going out to look for the bioluminescent plankton which are supposed to be here.
It sounds beautiful but somewhat neglected and maybe a bit frustrating.