It looks like I’ve arrived in a dystopian video game. All around me are towering, jagged skyscrapers, half-built or half-demolished, scores of empty windows, black as skeletal eye sockets. Towers of disaster march down the garbage-strewn seashore; each landscape more apocalyptic than the last. At any moment a hybrid tungsten killer-zombie sunburn could appear around the corner and laser me to death, meaning I’d have to start over from Level One. I’ve been to better places.
This is all a shame, because up to this point my trip past Cambodia to the so-called wonderful Cambodian islands has been going absolutely well. I started in Phnom Penh, which in recent years has become one of Asia’s most exciting yet affordable capitals after decades of dormancy: full of great food (freshwater shrimp pancakes!), vibrant Blade-Runner-style nightlife neighborhoods, hip new nightlife venues. boutique hotels, sparklingly renovated 14th-century Buddhist temples, riverside boulevards dotted with gastropubs, sky bars, tapas restaurants and still-authentic markets selling Russian kettles, live catfish, Tiger’s Eye jewels and sheer sensory overload.
From Phnom Penh, I took the new Chinese highway to the Cardamom Mountains to Shinta Mani Wild’s Edenic hideaway hotel, the brainchild of hotel design genius Bill Bensley; Here, you reach reception via a thrilling cable ride over the waterfalls (albeit a less exciting Jeep option) and after a few days of staring at hornbills in the banyans and lazily listening to the soothing white noise of rainforest wildlife, they usually set off in a state of blissful exhaustion.
That’s exactly what I did: Barely moving from my all-inclusive wooden glamp suite (with its en-suite bathroom on deck), I changed myself only to eat the best tasting menu on the wooden restaurant terrace, making the rounds. Right next to the waterfall is the swimming pool, which looks like a fancy bathtub, and take a leisurely boat tour where I swam in the green-shaded river and watched tropical kingfishers vividly fly overhead, decked out in all the colors of Elton John’s mid-seventies heyday.
Then I went back to the boulevard and quickly arrived here in dystopia. The chilling nightmare of modern Sihanoukville.
Why is Sihanoukville (“Snooky”) like this? This cool new Chinese road, which easily reduces the seven-hour journey to the coastal capital to around 120 minutes, offers a clue. Chinese investment has poured into Cambodia in recent years, and one of its main targets is or was the fishing settlement of Sihanoukville, once famous for cheap amok curries, ace beaches, Western dropouts and little else.
In a few years, the Chinese built billions of towers, which were quickly filled with some dubious characters. Suffice it to say that when the Cambodian government finally kicked out online gamblers, human traffickers and general undesirables there wasn’t much left and Covid finished the rest.
Now here stands Snooky, strange, unmanned but gorgeous in his own way, if you like 21st century Eastern versions of vertical Detroit on steroids.
Understandably, most people heading to the Cambodian islands tend to skip the city altogether. After an eye-opening city tour, I join the crowd at the sparkling marina.
A few minutes later we are all heading across the Gulf of Siam in a large speedboat. Soon Snooky’s gray pollution gives way to emerald green cleanliness, exuberant silver flying fish and the occasional dolphin. Half an hour later we arrived at a private pier on the west side of Koh Rong island and one of the most exquisite, jaw-dropping beaches I’ve ever seen.
The beach, called Sok San, consists of seven long, idyllic miles of angelically soft white sand, shaded by swaying palms and washed by gentle waves cleverly heated to a soul-soothing 29.3C. This is such a perfect beach that, after your third passionfruit mojito, you begin to desperately pick out the flaws: “Well, could that palm tree be moved twenty feet to the left for a slightly better photo?” Even better, it is thoroughly cleared of midges on a regular basis; This could create problems elsewhere in the region.
The obvious comparison to a world-class beach like the Maldives, Thailand or Polynesia, there is a problem here too. In all these places, you’re looking at an island brimming with development that makes the most of sand, sea and effortless blue skies. This development did not occur here in Cambodia. There were plans to devastate the place – think Sihanoukville – but these have now been put on hold indefinitely. Hooray!
All this means that Koh Rong consists of one perfect five-star resort: Royal Sands, where I stayed, complete with a glass-floor spa, oceanfront villas with private pools, the occasional golf cart, and a great all-day restaurant. It makes the best fish tacos this side of Tijuana, and there’s a crackling fire pit for gorgeous sunset appetizers (the beach faces west).
There are a few shy, middling resorts outside the Royal Sands – and the rest are pure rugged forests or whispering mangrove swamps (great for Zen-calm kayaking) or terrible roads ending in completely untouched sandy coves or fishing villages. It’s where locals sleep in hammocks all day after a hard night of catching sea urchins. Great.
There is a “town” on Koh Rong (and you can stay there if you want a budget trip, as most do) it’s called Koh Toch, and if there is such a thing as an “authentic” backpacker village, this is the one it has been removed from. The pages of Alex Garland’s The Beach, that’s it.
Expect delightfully drunk Westerners, sluggishly drunk locals, cheerful drunk cops, Nutella pancakes, delicious mullet barbecued in the surf, and ankle-bracelet-wearing, dreadlocked gap-year Danish girls making out with Norwegian guitarists. There are power outages from time to time. Nobody cares; almost no one notices. They light the candles and lanterns and throw another lobster at Barbie. Sexy, sighing, barefoot boho Koh Toch is a $15 (£11.78) tuk-tuk ride from the impeccable opulence of Royal Sands and long may the contrast continue.
Koh Rong is a dreamy place as everyone says; like Koh Samui in 1993, a particularly lovely and pristine Thai island (and I went to Koh Samui in 1993), but it seemed to me that just across the wavy turquoise waters was a much more perfect island, even less developed, but just as also seductive; from a different angle. Koh Rong Samloem. It also appears that snorkeling opportunities are good on this island, but that’s not the case on Koh Rong (thanks to fishing and coral bleaching, not development).
I take the longtail boat from Koh Toch. It turned out that my pilot was the only other passenger. He wasn’t sure where I was going and dropped me off at the wrong dock as the sun beat down on the island’s forested hills. Koh Rong Samloem, like Koh Rong, is blissfully devoid of decent roads, so I have to persuade another Khmer fisherman on a speedboat to abandon his whiskey-soaked seaside card game and drunkenly guide me to the right place before nightfall. He shrugs and very politely takes five US dollars from me. In Cambodia, especially on the islands, almost everyone is kind.
My final destination is a small village called M’Pai. It consists of a pier, a nearly comatose beach, a half-dozen lovely nearby beaches, an oddly chic wine bar, more Khmer fishing families, about 50 expats (some backpackers, some old poet types) and about 300 residents in total. There are a few good hotels in the back; all the action takes place on the coastline, where the bars consist of school desks in the surf. I took a room at Bong. It has a cold water shower, magnificent sea view and a wooden balcony. It’s $10 a night and they serve cold Singapore pilsner and pesto sandwiches downstairs.
In sweet, sleepy, remote M’pai, hours blur into afternoons, and I think this can easily blend into all lives. Music floats beneath the palms, scuba divers occasionally jump on boats, people run into the sea at night laughing because the local plankton bioluminescent beautifully: the krill glow in whirlwind swirls of silver and blue as you move, as if you were the source of underwater fireworks.
How long will these majestic paradise islands resist the roads, resorts and 7 Elevens that have destroyed nearly every island in Thailand and beyond? Three years? Six? Front? Who knows, but for now they stay in that perfect sweet spot of 94 percent spotless, but you can buy a good sauvignon blanc. Go now.
Fundamentals
Sean Thomas traveled with Experience Travel Group (020 7924 7133; experiencetravelgroup.com). They offer 11 days/10 nights on a FB & HB basis for: three nights Shinta Mani Wild, five nights Royal Sands and a boutique hotel in Phnom Penh for £8,450pp including all private transfers and flights from the UK