Koh Rong

For the last few days we have been enjoying the slow and peaceful island life on Koh Rong. We took a ferry here from Cambodia's coast on Saturday. It was a rough crossing, not helped by the heavy rain and by the time we arrived, both Will and I were feeling a bit worse for wear. We settled into our beach side hotel and watched the rain from the covered balcony.

The next day was Will’s birthday and we had planned a day trip to go fishing and swimming with bio-luminescent plankton, but as the rain continued all day, it was looking less and less likely. Sure enough, our hotel host informed us after breakfast that the trip had been rained off. Instead we enjoyed a walk along the beach and lunch at a beach side restaurant, all whilst wearing our handy ponchos. On the way back to our hotel, we found a tourist shop that offered the evening plankton swimming trip as it's own activity and we thought we'd try our luck with that instead. By the time we were ready to meet at the tourist shop, it had stopped raining and we were feeling hopeful for some birthday plankton, but just as our captain arrived to show us to his boat, the heavens opened and it poured down with rain. He had to call the trip off, as it wasn't safe to go out in the boat. A disappointing ending to Will's birthday, but we kept our tickets and agreed to come back the next evening to try again. We got an ice cream to cheer ourselves up on the way back to the hotel.

On Monday we had a morning dive planned with the local scuba diving shop. We were both really looking forward to this as it has been years since either of us had been scuba diving. When we arrived, we were kitted out with all the gear we needed. On the boat out to the dive spot we were given all the required safety information and instructions on how to use the equipment. I was a bit nervous jumping off the boat into the sea, but Will was completely unfazed and went first. We completed the safety dives before swimming to a nearby reef. The visibility was poor due to lots of algae in the water, so we had to stick together closely and kept bumping into each other in our determination not to get lost. Despite the 2m visibility, we still managed to see lots of fish and corals, although we nearly swam right into them a couple of times as they appeared out of the algae! A very water activity based day because in the evening after dark, we boarded another boat to try and find the bio-luminescent plankton. When we finally arrived at the right spot, we had success on this front and I went swimming with the plankton as they only glow when disturbed. I splashed about to get them to light up and it looked like shooting stars under water! Will enjoyed the spectacle from the boat as his ear was a bit achy after the scuba diving and he didn't fancy getting water in it. After half an hour of fun watching the plankton, it was time to head back to shore. We only just got back to our hotel before it started to tip it down with rain again. We had been very lucky with the weather all day and we didn't mind watching it pour from the comfort of our hotel now that we'd completed all of the days activities.