Koh Rong island is spectacular. It is 97% undeveloped with 47km of pristine white beaches. Most of the guesthouses and restaurants are on a small strip. It may have been the most western place we have stayed. Aka we ate pasta pretty much every night.
On our first of four days here, we decided to walk to Long Beach which is about an hour trek through the jungle away. We sauntered off expecting a nice flat walk. Not so much. The first 40 minutes is
Midclimb!
lovely just a small uphill most of the way. But the final 20 minutes is treacherous. Pretty much we were just climbing down a rock face.
In three different spots on the hike, ropes were provided for us to clutch onto as we shimmied down the rock. But after the Gibbon Experience, Jaz and I are pretty much fearless. No cliff face will come between us and the beach. Our struggle was well worth it. This was the beach that greeted us on the otherside:
The water was warm and beautiful. We happily wasted the day swimming and reading and laughing that we were not in freezing cold Toronto.
On the second day, we took an organized boat tour to fish and snorkel around the island.
After playing around snorkelling, we had to be serious for a while. Today we had to earn our lunch.
Now I'm not sure if fishing is a skill, but I do know that I caught 3 fish while Jasmine caught none. I think this must point to my innate superior ability to survive in the wilds.
Fish #2... But wait!
The guide throws him off my hook in disgust (we can't eat him).
Silly little guy got stuck!
Our guide finally took pity on Jaz and let her reel in one of his catches.
After all this work, we caught enough fish for lunch (contributions were given from the guides' catches).
After lunch, we hung out at long beach some more and saw the sunset before boating back to the main area.
On day three, we separated and Jasmine went scuba diving while I went back to Long Beach on my own.
Katie: Everything was going fabulous for me on my solo venture through the jungle. I cheerfully marched alone passed the "don't walk alone in the jungle sign." I relaxed and read and swam all like I did previously with Jasmine. Just before sunset, I gathered up my belongings and headed back into the jungle (eschewing the lazy folk who took a boat back). After climbing up the rock face (which is quite a feat for me as I am known to have a neurotic fear of heights), I sauntered along the jungle trail. Unfortunately, as I had to take the hike barefoot, my enjoyment of the day was hindered when I stepped onto a newly dead snake on the path. It mushed up between my toes. In my disgust, I stopped paying attention to where I was. After 15 more minutes of walking, everything seemed different than before. I did not remember passing these hewn logs to my right. In a total panic (the sun was setting at this point which meant I was soon to be alone, lost in the jungle at night), I ran back along the path. Only to find out I had never turned off the path, in fact I was mere meters from the end when I turned back. On the second journey back, I stealthily followed some Swedes who kept mocking me for my shoe choice (or lack there of) sigh! Anyways clearly it is a good thing Jasmine is around most of the time to keep me sane.
Jasmine- having not gone diving for a few years now, I decided the best thing to do would be to sign up for a refresher course. I was lead to believe this would entail an hour of going over skills and knowledge before going out for one dive. False. I essentially joined the regular dive with Zero review, but with the privilege of the dive master as my buddy. The dives themselves were pretty average, but it was really great to get back into it and feel comfortable in the water again - plus I was with a really lovely group of Swedish gals we met the day before at the beach. All in all a successful outting.
Our forth day was a lot like our first, but that night we had dinner on the beach near our guesthouse. I had my phone out on the table and two Cambodian children came over and started hit all of the numbers hundreds of times in a row. In attempt to get it back jasmine and I showed them the cards we were playing with. Oh did they know cards. The girl quickly snatched the cards from Jasmine's hands and dealt out six cards to her brother and they began to rapidly play. Jaz and I wanted in on the action. I'm still not sure what the goal of the game was (maybe getting pairs?) but the girl beside jaz pretty much freely used jaz's hand to better her own while the boy beside me sighed in dispair at all my foolish movements. The prize for winning the game was that you got to hit all the losers, which we learnt after being hit round after round. I feel like we got played.
Unfortunately that meal left me a little unsettled, so we delayed our journey to Siem Reap a day.
Well not that unfortunately, it left us one more day to do this:
As we await yet another snow storm and more freezing weather, I am officially jealous,although the lost in the jungle and diving without refresher course stories made me very anxious. I love the synchro shot!
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