Khmer New Year on Koh Rong Sanleum

Our was hotel was situated on the southern end of Saracen bay and they explicitly told us which ferry to take. Once we arrived at the port we got ushered into a huge hall for parking and then led to the ticket corner. Ticket in hand waiting for the boat we realized it was the wrong ferry 🤣 Right island, wrong pier 🤷‍♂️ As we weren’t the only guests making that mistake the hotel sent a little boat to pick us all up 😬

The view

Aaron and I went diving, first dive had miserable visibility but the second was great. Even had some current which allowed us to enjoy the many fish without having to do much work. Sadly there weren’t many big fish, the instructor told us they do not respect size requirements when fishing and just take out whatever they can… 🙄

But the best part was that we shaved our mustaches so the mask wouldn’t leak. I present you:

Amish Aaron 🤣

Highlight (at least for the locals) was obviously Khmer New Year! There were water and baby powder battles. 

As well some silly games where you had to smash some pots blindfolded.

Another day we spent at the pool, not doing much 😎

And played more pool.

And totally slept through some major storm hitting the island 😆 Our neighbors got completely soaked in their little cabin and took shelter in the hotel lobby. We only had a small puddle of water, nothing more.

A tree almost hit another bungalow and heaps of boats stranded. The storm wasn’t announced together with the aftermath of the new year festivities almost nobody was prepared to drive the boats further out to ride out the storm.

The yellow boat was our dive boat 😮

Setting them upright and waiting for the tide

Some help from the nearby construction site

We had planned to visit one of the many beaches, but we were too lazy to walk 30min to Lazy Beach 🤣

After four nights it was time to say goodbye and head back to the mainland. We stayed another night at the Blue Lagoon in Sihanoukville before heading to Kampot.

In the shadow of abandoned developments