To our delight, this morning we woke up to blue skies and sun. To our horror we discovered we are both covered in bites, presumably received whilst out at dinner last night. We were extra pleased about the weather as we were booked onto an all day boat tour round Koh Rong. Unfortunately the skies did not stay blue for long and we spent the majority the day racing the storm round the island, getting caught a couple of times in the rain. This didn't stop us from enjoying a fun day though.
Our first stop of the boat tour was a random place off the coast of the island in the middle of the sea for a morning swim. It was still sunny at this point and the water was lovely and warm. Lauren and I were lazy and used the optional life jackets to just float about in the water. It was only a short swim as we had to head off to make it to our next stop before the storm came in. We had originally meant to be stopping at Coconut Reef for some snorkeling, which I had been looking forward to, but due to the weather this just wasn't feasible.
The boat ride to our next stop was very rocky as the boat went through the waves. We got very wet and there was a lot of water in the boat. At several points it felt like the boat would capsize with just one big wave. It was fun in a scary kind of way.
After what seemed like a long time we arrived at our stop. There was no piers at any of the stops so we were just using the ladder to get down into the sea and wading to shore. We visited Preksway village which is the largest village on the island. We looked at the village school which was built and funded by a Norwegian family. There were no kids there today; it's a holiday period at the moment apparently. Next we looked at the biggest temple on the island. It's still being built but the foundations are there and there's a Buddha statue inside to it's a sacred place, meaning no shoes are allowed to be worn inside, even by the builders.
Next we saw a pagoda, constructed mainly out of wood. It was quite different to all the fancy pagodas we have seen elsewhere. We then wandered through the village, stopping at different houses and shops, trying different things. I tried Rice wine, soy milk ad aloe vera juice. I didn't like the wine, the other two weren't bad. Also on offer were baby figs but I didn't try those. We crossed a bridge over the river and saw some monkeys hanging off a couple of the houses, which was pretty cute. We then stopped at a house/shop where they made and sold coconut oil. I didn't buy any but I did heed the advice to not stand still under a coconut tree. The weather managed to stay hot and sunny the whole time we were in the village but by the time we reached out next stop it had clouded over and we didn't really see the sun again all day.
We then went back to the boat and sailed to Lonely Beach where we had chicken skewers and rice for lunch. Lauren and I kicked a football about for a bit and then we finally got to do some snorkeling. We didn't see that many fish but there was lots of plants which were pretty cool. It started raining whilst we were in the water but it wasn't much of a problem since we were wet anyway.
After we had snorkel led we went back to the boat and attempted to do some fishing. We didn't use a rod, we just had what was basically a roll of twine with some bait on the end. I kept getting mine caught on someone on the opposite side of the boats. Hardly anyone caught anything. Neither me or Lauren managed to catch any fish. Eventually we gave up and we sailed to our next stop; Long Beach.
Long beach used to be in the top ten beaches in the world, until the Royal Group built a pier at the end of it. From what we were told the Royal Group are in the process of turning this beautiful island into a large holiday resort Long beach is 7km with amazing blue water and white fine sand. Lauren and I played frisby and volleyball in the beautiful warm water with the majority of the group (there was about 20 of us). It was getting cold and dark at this point so we had a bonfire on the beach. Unfortunately we didn't get much benefit from it. It was short lived due to the incoming storm clouds causing up to head off.
Our last stop was probably my personal favourite activity of the day. We dropped anchor in the sea and got in with our snorkels to see the glow in the dark plant based plankton. It lit up when you moved in the water as a defence mechanism. It was like tiny little dots of light when you waved your arms about in the water. It was pretty cool.
After this we headed back round the island to where we started. We had done a whole circuit of the island, and as we sailed back we could see the sky in the distant being lit up by lightning. We arrived back at around 8pm. It was a very short walk back to our accommodation where we showered and got dry for the first time in a while, before going out for dinner. We then returned to the hostel and collapsed after a very long and busy day.
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