After the night in the hotel of hell in Sihanoukville I was ready for happier times on a deserted island, but sadly it looked like mother nature may have other plans for my day.
From arrival in Sihanoukville it had literally pissed down with rain and it was seemingly not going to abate as we waited to get picked up for the ferry. Would we make it to Koh Rong?
Getting from Sihanoukville to Koh Rong
Eventually we were picked up by a bus that dropped us to the office in Sihanoukville town that would arrange our ticket and drop us at the terminal. There are numerous companies that offer this service and it is about $22 return Sihanoukville to Koh Rong. If you want to go further to Koh Rong Sanloem it will add about another four bucks.
As we were at the ferry company it was briefly debated about if we should go or not seeing as when the weather gets really bad you may end up stuck on the island. And then we thought fuck it and booked anyway, theoretically to come back two days later.
The boat to Koh Rong
We were dropped rather unceremoniously to an industrial looking dock with some shops on stilts and were to take a rather pirate like walk to the pier. Thankfully i’d been here many years before, so kinda knew the drill, but we basically just stood there in the rain waiting for a boat.
Patience is a virtue and eventually the boat arrived and we jumped on. It was probably only about half full which meant we got sofas to ourselves.
To say the waves were choppy would be grossly understating things, with the boat jumping in and out the water to the screams of its passengers (actual screams). As a former sailor I was OK with things, but others less so. In a very manly fashion I dealt with bags of puke.
As bad as it seemed though it appeared that we were the “lucky” boat, with another later one needing rescuing by the coastguard (although no one was hurt). Our boat was also to the last for the next 4 days…..
Technically the journey “only” takes 45 minutes, but with choppy waters and Koh Tock (the main beach) being the second stop it took nearer 90 minutes.
Yet we had arrived! Arrived on our soaked dreary island ready for a 15 minute walk through rain and sand, without any knowledge of when we may be able to leave the island again.
Welcome to Koh Rong……