Koh Rong: Cambodia’s Tropical Resort Island
On the evening before my ferry trip to Koh Rong, one of the two main islands off the coast of Sihanoukville, Cambodia, I was talking to an American tourist who had just returned from a day trip to Koh Rong. He was aghast to learn that I had booked a week on Koh Rong. “I’d rather commit suicide than spend a night on Koh Rong,” he said. “I’ve been to many islands all over the world. Koh Rong is the worst I’ve ever visited. It’s a hot, trash-strewn hell-hole,” he told me.
The morning after my conversation with the American tourist, I headed apprehensively to the ferry terminal for my fast cat ferry service. I’d been forewarned that the ferry services were now operating out of the main Sihanoukville Port (entry through Gate 1) and not from Serendipity Pier at the northern end of Ou Chhouteal Beach. That was good to know because I’d read bad reviews about the boarding experiences at Serendipity Pier which used to get very crowded when ferries were arriving and departing.
At the main port the ferry companies now have more space – each operating out of a section of two large warehouses. The check-in process and boarding experience is still very chaotic (but not atypical of ferry services in other countries of Southeast Asia) but provided you keep an eye on your luggage and keep checking with the ferry company representatives about when your service will depart (mine departed right on time), you should be right.
Inside the ‘new’ ferry terminal at Sihanoukville Port.
The trip across to Koh Rong took only 40 minutes. The ferry was full, which is why you need to buy tickets at least a day in advance (they can be booked online). We stopped first at the main community pier at Kaoh Touch Beach, and I suspect that may have been to where the American traveller had taken his day trip. I didn’t disembark as I was going on to the next stop at Long Set Beach where I had booked my accommodation.
I’d read that Long Set Beach – also known as 4K Beach – was the best on Koh Rong, so I’d made my booking there rather than at Kaoh Touch where there were more resorts. From what I saw of Kaoh Touch Beach from the ferry, it looked busy but didn’t look like a “hell-hole” (but more on that later).
When we arrived alongside the pier at Long Set Beach about 10 minutes later, I was relieved to see that the beach looked as good as its photos and the area had a real tropical resort feel to it. I’d booked a place called Beachwalk towards the eastern end of Long Set Beach based on some good Google reviews. The manager of Beachwalk, a Finnish guy by the name of Tero, was at the pier to meet me along with a couple of staff members to carry my bags. He explained that his staff would take my bags to the resort in a tuk tuk, but we would walk along the beach because the road was very rough.
Long Set Beach is the best swimming beach on Koh Rong.
It was an easy 10 minutes’ walk along the white sand to the resort and on the way I learned from Tero that they’d only been open for five weeks. He told me that they had more of a western menu than other resorts on Long Set Beach, and for me that turned out to be a godsend because I wasn’t impressed by the meal offerings of the other resorts on Long Set Beach that I checked out during the week that I was there. It was all local food or mediocre pizzas (although there was one good pizza restaurant run by an Italian guy in the so-called “Pub Street” just back from the pier on Long Set Beach).
We also chatted about the problem of trash on the beach. It’s a problem that exists all along Cambodia’s coastline and on its islands. It’s not just trash dumped by locals (who have zero understanding that it’s a big turn-off factor for foreign tourists) but trash washed up every night from other countries around Southeast Asia. Fortunately, most of it is confined to the high-water mark, and the soft white sand of Long Set Beach itself is as pristine as on any island resort in Thailand or the Philippines – as long as you are looking away from the high-water mark.
Tero told me that they clean the beach outside their resort every morning, and when we reached the resort there was no trash to be seen. If only the American tourist had made it this far, I think his opinion of Koh Rong would have been different. Tero also told me his resort was planning to explore ways to enlist the support of locals to keep the rest of the beach clean. I hope they can achieve that because Long Set Beach would be truly a beautiful beach if the trash along the high-water mark was not there.
Trash along the high-water mark of a Koh Rong beach.
During the week I stayed at Beachwalk, I swam in the ocean most days. Sometimes around dawn, so I could watch the sun rise over the headland at the eastern end of Long Set Beach, and sometimes in the late afternoon, so I could watch the sun set over the headland at the western end of the beach. There are no rocks in the water. It’s all soft sand with a gentle slope into the ocean. There are no sharks, jellyfish or stonefish, and no rips, so it’s an extremely safe beach for swimming.
During my days on Koh Rong, I explored the rest of the island. Koh Rong is quite a large island (78 sq km in area) with jungle-clad hills that rise to over 300 metres. The coastline is comprised of rocky headlands with sandy beaches between, and one very long beach on the western side of the island called Sok San Beach. I visited every beach on Koh Rong except Lonely Beach on the north coast, which can only be accessed by motorbike.
Koh Rong is too large to walk around, so to tour the island you need to either rent a motorbike (nearly every resort has a motorcycle hire place nearby or can arrange for one to be delivered). As I don’t ride a motorbike, I hired a local taxi instead. The local taxis are usually old Toyota or Nissan pickups with wooden seats under a canopy on the back. They are not labelled as such as they are usually private vehicles that the owners operate as taxis when they are not using them.
The Toyota pick-up ‘taxi’ I used to tour the island.
You have to ask around to find out who has a “taxi” available. I hired mine from the Thai restaurant on Pub Street. They will cost between US$80 and $120 a day depending on their condition and whether they have air-conditioning (you can sit in the cab with the driver or ride on the back). You can hire for half a day for half the price but that’s not enough time to see the whole island. Those rates include the driver who is usually the owner of the vehicle.
Some of the owners will let you drive yourself once you get to know your way around the island for a discounted price. However, this is a risky way to save money because you won’t be insured, and you’ll undoubtedly be asked to cough up the full cost of any repairs if you have an accident.
There is a concreted road from Sok San Beach right around the southern and eastern part of the island up to a few kilometres from the Preaek Svay fishing village. Most of the resorts on the island are located down dirt roads or sandy tracks that run off that concrete road. A few sections of the concrete road have not been completed yet, and there are deep culverts alongside the road in a few places, so anyone touring the island on a motorbike would need to do so with caution.
Preaek Svay village on the northeast coast of Koh Rong.
Most of the island is quite scenic except for the middle section around the paperbark swamps where a Chinese construction company is building an airport. I was told the company is also building three casinos on the island and the airport will be used for charter flights to bring in gamblers from the Chinese mainland. That part of the island, which extends down to the southern section of Sok San Beach where the first casino is being built, is very unattractive as it is little more than a large construction site.
There is a lot of virgin jungle on the island, and I asked about hiking opportunities. However, I was advised that there are many poisonous snakes (cobras, banded kraits, Malayan and white-lipped pit vipers), tarantula spiders and scorpions in the jungle, so I opted not to go for a jungle hike. I did however do the walk along the boardwalk through the Prek Tasok mangrove forest. The boardwalk is 1.8 km long, so it’s a 3.6 km walk to the end and back.
The Prek Tasok boardwalk has only recently been constructed so you won’t find it on many maps yet. But it’s fairly easy to find. It’s located on the east coast along the Ta Sok river about halfway between Long Set Beach and Preaek Svay. The entrance is directly off the concrete road on the right when going north. There is a wooden sign that says “Prek Tasok Ecotourism Community”.
The shady boardwalk through mangroves at Prek Tasok.
The boardwalk is well shaded by the mangroves so it’s a walk you can tackle at any time of the day. There is no entrance fee. I did the walk in the middle of the day and there were no mosquitoes around. There were also no other people around (my taxi driver waited at the entrance) so it was a most enjoyable ‘back to nature’ experience.
I did however see some other tourists on kayaks on the Ta Sok river. That would be another relaxing way of exploring the mangroves, but you would need plenty of sun protection in the middle of the day because there is no shade in the middle of the river. The kayaks can be hired from a small landing on the river close to the entrance to the boardwalk.
The other place that is a ‘must visit’ on any tour of the island is the Preaek Svay fishing village. That’s as far north as you can go on the concrete road (in fact the last kilometre or so is over dirt roads). It’s a pretty fishing village but the highlight is its temple. From the outside the temple looks very ordinary, but inside there are some magnificent wall and ceiling murals that are a surprise to find in such remote location.
The beautiful interior of the Buddhist temple at Preaek Svay.
Aside from the Prek Tasok boardwalk and the Preaek Svay fishing village and temple, there’s not much else to see on Koh Rong aside from the beaches which are the main reason people go to Koh Rong. The island used to be a draw for younger travellers with its infamous full moon open-air rave parties at Police Beach, but they were shut down at the start of the Covid pandemic, and there are no signs that they will be re-established.
I would agree with other travel writers that Long Set Beach is the best beach on the island. Sok San Beach is a much longer sandy beach – and facing west it would be a great beach to watch the sunset from – but there’s not much vegetation behind Sok San Beach so it felt a bit desolate to me. On Long Set Beach there are lots of Casuarina trees and coconut palms to provide shade, but very few on Sok San Beach.
Pagoda Beach on the east coast, which is the next largest beach, also felt barren to me because there was not much vegetation close to the beach. Some of the resorts on that beach have planted coconut palms in front of their resorts, but it will be many years before they are established. Pagoda Beach is not so good for swimming as the Long Set and Sok San beaches as there are a lot of rocks in the water.
The community pier and beach at Kaoh Touch.
The beach at Kaoh Touch is also quite a good swimming beach which brings me back to the topic of the American tourist who described Kaoh Touch as a hell-hole. I visited Kaoh Touch on my third day on the island (it’s possible to walk there from Long Set Beach at low tide). I could sort of understand why someone might not like Kaoh Touch.
There are a lot of budget resorts crammed onto Kaoh Touch Beach and some of them are very rundown. For a day tripper to the island, they wouldn’t find much to do at Kaoh Touch. Lots of small shops and stalls selling cheap souvenirs, a few bars, some dingy-looking massage places and a couple of cafes that don’t look that clean. It takes less than 15 minutes to walk from one end of Kaoh Touch Beach to the other, so I could see why a day tripper would quickly become bored.
Kaoh Touch has some of the cheapest accommodation on the island so its where many of the backpackers and budget travellers head. It’s a noisy spot with dirty alleyways and can get crowded when the day trippers arrive. Maybe the American tourist had a bad experience there in one of the bars or cafes. It’s not a place I would recommend to anyone, but I wouldn’t call it a hell-hole.
Souvenir stalls along the beach front at Kaoh Touch.
The rest of the beaches around Koh Rong tend to be hidden away down dirt roads. Some you might call hidden gems, others not so impressive. Many of the smaller beaches have one or two resorts located on them, but some of them closed during the Covid pandemic and haven’t reopened. Some appear to have caretakers living there – perhaps with the intention of reopening soon – but others have been abandoned and left in a state of disrepair.
Accommodation costs on Koh Rong vary from $15 a night for a tent near the Long Set Beach Pier to around $4,000 a night for a two-bedroom over-the-water villa at Song Saa Private Island near the Preaek Svay fishing village. The Song Saa rates include a private speedboat transfer from Sihanoukville. The resort has generally good reviews on most booking sites, which is what you would expect for accommodation in that price range.
The second most expensive resort on the island is The Royal Sands on Sok San Beach with room rates from $200 to $400 a night. Their rates also include a private speedboat transfer from the mainland. I tried to book a lunch at the Royal Sands to see what it was like, but the resort doesn’t admit guests who are not staying there. The resort doesn’t look that impressive from the outside and has mixed reviews on Google and Trip Advisor, with some guests commenting that it is overpriced.
The Sok San Beach Resort is a cheaper option at $80 a night.
Most of the other resorts fall within the $50-150 price range. I paid $98 per night for my King room at the Beachwalk which was reasonable value despite the resort still experiencing some teething problems being so new (like smelly drains and leaking roofs). The food was very good, although the menu was quite limited, so I was getting bored with it towards the end of the week.
I noted that in the week after I left, I could have got the same room for $82 a night. I think the higher price I paid related to the fact that part of my stay overlapped the Chinese New Year holiday period. I had lunch one day at the Sok San Beach Resort on the northern end of Sok San Beach. That looked to be a clean and well-maintained resort offering good value at $80 a night, but I wasn’t overly impressed with their restaurant menu. I think I would have got bored with the food there much sooner than I did at the Beachwalk.
Other resorts along Long Set beach had much larger menus, but they were either all Cambodian food or all Chinese food. Many of the resorts on Koh Rong cater exclusively for either Cambodians or Chinese, so if you want a wider selection of food, it’s important to check out the resort reviews (or menus if they are published online) to see if the resort caters for international travellers.
The rainforest walk over Koh Rong Hill to the next cove.
One day I walked to a resort in the next cove to the east of Long Set Beach. There is a concrete path that goes through the rainforest on Koh Rong Hill. It starts at the back of the Koh Rong Hill Beach Resort (which caters exclusively to Cambodian tourists) at the far eastern end of Long Set Beach and ends up at a resort that is called Probe Resort on Google Maps and Nature Resort on Apple Maps.
However, according to the signs at the resort, it’s actually called ‘For All Resort’, but that’s a misnomer. All of the guests were Chinese and when I went into the restaurant to check their menu, it was only written in Chinese (if they had an English version, they didn’t show it to me). The staff were unfriendly, and I didn’t feel welcome there at all.
I mentioned earlier that there was a good pizza place on Pub Street near the Long Set pier. The pizzas are the best I tasted on the island but I only went there once because my wine glass had bloody fingerprints on it. The owner is the chef and waiter as well, and he must have cut his finger in the kitchen. I didn’t feel that it was the cleanest of places.
There are more than six resorts on Pagoda Beach.
A Swiss tourist with whom I was chatting at the Beachwalk told me she had ridden her motorbike over to Pagoda Beach one day and had a very good lunch at the Secret Garden resort there. I didn’t have time to check that resort out, but the menu on their website looks good. They describe it as “western, Asian and fusion cuisine” and they promise that their kitchen adheres to “international hygienic standards”.
A question that many may ask is whether Koh Rong is worth travelling to Cambodia for, if you are looking to spend a week on a tropical island. In my opinion, the answer to that question is no. There are much better beach holiday options available in Thailand and the Philippines.
Cambodia has some great value accommodation on the mainland – often half the price of similar places in Thailand and the Philippines – but prices on Koh Rong are much higher than on the mainland. Tourism operators on Koh Rong blame that on the high price of shipping everything on ferries to the island.
A dirt road in the interior of Koh Rong.
However, if you are already in Cambodia and looking for a beach break, then by all means book a trip to Koh Rong. There are not a lot of beach holiday options available in Cambodia and Koh Rong is way better than the dirty beaches around Sihanoukville or the crowded beaches around Chhap Kep Bay.
Just do your research properly on the accommodation options, read the reviews on Google (which tend to be less biased than those on hotel booking sites) and be prepared for food to cost more than on the mainland, and the quality of the food often not being up to the standard of places you may have visited in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap or Kampot.
All images: © David Astley
