83 Days Later

I’ve already talked about the beaches, but did I mention the phosphorescence? I’d swam with the little glowing plankton creatures in Railay but in Koh Rong it was just…better? Way better. You kinda had to be there, but it was amazing. I’d also like to add that during my 2am plankton swim with one of the Australian bros, two hippies walked past, seeing glowing lights in the water and completely tripped out. “Duuuuuuude omigod something is in the water!” “Dude!! Omigod it’s moving!” “Duude wtf is it?!” “Mannnn I’m getting scared man..” Don’t do drugs, kids.

I also had a lovely little boating adventure with a small Cambodian man named Sun. Sun is a farmer from Sihanoukville that decided to start a tour company on the island. He usually has captains to take out the tourists but he wanted to go fishing so took me out himself. This was fine & all…except the man can’t swim and admitted he also wasn’t that great with boats (oh, good).

So Sun and I went fishing, caught some squid and piddly little fish and then headed to another island for some snorkelling. The coral was sweet, the fish were cool and it was all fun and games until Sun pulled out a spear and announced we were going spear fishing (but…Nemo!). I really wasn’t very good at spear fishing. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt the pretty fish and the ugly fish were hard to come by. It’s also a lot harder to kill a fish when you’re staring it in the face.

Post-spear fishing I had told Sun we could go home, but he insisted on enjoying a beachside BBQ. The only problem was that we both sucked at fishing so our BBQ options were…more than limited.

But wait, Sun had an idea! He motored on over to one of the legitimate fishing boats and threw himself into the water, life jacket in hand (the man can’t swim remember), cash held high above his head, on his way to buy us some dinner. It is at this point I realized that I probably should have told the man I don’t like seafood.

I did my best to pretend to eat/take small nibbles/(I mostly just moved the food around on my plate) as we enjoyed our feast of squid, crab, fish, and stingray. It was a super cute day, me and my little Cambodian friend adventuring at sea, and it definitely added to the beauty that is Koh Rong.