It looks like I've entered a dystopian video game. All around me are tall, jagged skyscrapers, half built or half collapsing, with countless empty windows as black as skeletal eye sockets. The ominous towers parade along the littered coast, each view more apocalyptic than the last. At any moment now a hybrid tungsten killer zombie is going to loom around the sunburned corner and laser me to death, meaning I have to start over from level one. I've been to nicer places.
That's all a shame, because so far my trip through Cambodia to the supposedly wonderful Cambodian islands has certainly gone well. I started in Phnom Penh, which in recent years, after decades of torpor, has become one of Asia's most exciting yet affordable capitals: full of excellent food (the freshwater shrimp pancakes!), vibrant Blade Runner-esque entertainment districts, chic new boutique hotels, shiny renovated 14th century Buddhist temples, riverside boulevards with gastropubs, sky bars, tapas restaurants and still authentic markets with Russian teapots, live catfish, Tiger's Eye jewelry and total sensory overload.
From Phnom Penh I took the new Chinese highway to the Cardamom Mountains, to the Edenic hideaway Shinta Mani Wild - brainchild of hotel design genius Bill Bensley - where you arrive via a thrilling zipwire over the tumbling waterfalls, straight to the reception (although there is a less exciting Jeep option) and generally leave in a state of blissful torpor, after several days of gazing at the hornbills in the Banyans and lazily listening to the soothing white noise of the rainforest wildlife.
Me, I did just that: I barely stepped out of my all-inclusive hardwood glamp suite (with the freestanding bath on the deck), moving just to eat the tip-top tasting menu on the restaurant's wooden terrace, doing laps to venture into the graceful tub-like pool - right by the waterfall - and take a languid boat ride, where I swam in the green, shady river and watched tropical kingfishers fly vividly overhead, decorated in all the colors of Elton John during his mid-1970s heyday .
The story continues
Then I came back to the boulevard and was quickly here: to dystopia. The horrifying nightmare that is modern Sihanoukville.
Why is Sihanoukville ("Snooky") like this? That brilliant new Chinese road - which handily cuts the seven-hour drive to the coastal city to around 120 minutes - gives an idea. Chinese investment has flowed into Cambodia in recent years, and one of the main targets is - or was - the fishing settlement of Sihanoukville, once famous for its cheap amok curries, top beaches, Western dropouts and not much else.
Within a few years, the Chinese built a billion towers, which were soon filled with some questionable characters. Suffice it to say that when the Cambodian government finally got rid of the online gamblers, human traffickers and general undesirables, there wasn't much left - and Covid finished off the rest.
Now here's Snooky, bizarre, unpopulated and yet spectacular in its own way, if you like 21st century Eastern versions of a vertical Detroit on steroids.
Understandably, most people traveling to the islands of Cambodia skip the city altogether. After a breathtaking city tour, I join the crowd in the shiny marina.
A few minutes later we are all sailing across the Gulf of Siam in a large speedboat. Soon, the gray color of Snooky's pollution gives way to emerald green purity, exuberant silver flying fish and the occasional dolphin. After half an hour we arrived at a private pier on the west side of Koh Rong island - and one of the most exquisite, breathtaking beaches I have ever seen.
The beach is called Sok San and consists of seven long, idyllic kilometers of angelically soft white sand, shaded by swaying palms and surrounded by gentle surf, cleverly warmed to a soothing 29.3 degrees Celsius. This is a beach so perfect that, after your third passion fruit mojito, you desperately try to nitpick: "Well, that palm tree could be moved two meters to the left, for a slightly superior photo?". In fact, it is regularly completely cleared of sand flies - which can be difficult elsewhere in the region.
The obvious comparison for a world-class beach like this is the Maldives, Thailand or Polynesia - and therein lies the problem. In all those places you would be looking at an island full of buildings, taking full advantage of the sand, the sea and the effortlessly blue sky. Here, in Cambodia, that development has not taken place. There were plans to destroy the place - think Sihanoukville - but they have now been put on hold indefinitely. Hurrah!
All of which means that Koh Rong consists of just one excellent five-star resort: Royal Sands, where I'm staying, complete with glass-floor spa, oceanfront villas with private pools, occasional golf carts, a gorgeous all-day restaurant that has the best fish tacos this side of Tijuana, and a crackling fire pit for sublime sunset aperitifs (the beach faces due west).
Apart from Royal Sands, there are a few shy, mediocre resorts - and the rest is pure hilly jungle, or whispering mangrove swamps (great for zen-calm kayaking), or completely unspoilt sandy coves, or terrible roads ending in high-altitude fishing villages. where locals sleep in hammocks all day after a hard night catching sea urchins. It's fantastic.
There is one 'town' in Koh Rong (and this is where you would stay if you want a budget trip, as many do), it's called Koh Toch and if there is such a thing as an 'authentic' backpacker village that has been taken from the pages from Alex Garland's The Beach, this is it.
Expect pleasantly drunk Westerners, languidly drunk locals, jovially drunk police, Nutella pancakes, delicious sea mullet barbecued in the surf and dreadlocked Danish gap year girls with anklets making out with Norwegian guitarists. There are occasional power outages. No one minds; almost no one notices. They light candles and lanterns and throw another lobster on the barbecue. The sexy, sighing, barefoot boho Koh Toch is a $15 (£11.78) tuk tuk ride from the immaculate opulence of Royal Sands, and long may that contrast continue.
Koh Rong is as dreamy as everyone says - like a particularly beautiful and unspoilt Thai island, like Koh Samui, circa 1993 (and I went to Koh Samui in 1993), but I'm told that across the choppy turquoise waters is a an even more distant perfect island, even less developed, yet just as seductive - in a different way. Koh Rong Samloem. Moreover, this island apparently has good snorkeling, which is not the case on Koh Rong (thanks to fishing and coral bleaching, and not to development).
I take the longtail boat from Koh Toch. My pilot turns out to be the only other passenger. He's not sure where I'm going, and as the sun covers the jungle of the island hills, he drops me off at the wrong pier. Because Koh Rong Samloem, like Koh Rong, is blithely devoid of good roads, I have to convince another Khmer fisherman with a speedboat to give up his whiskey-soaked card game on the shore and drunkenly steer me to the right spot before evening falls. He shrugs and very graciously charges me five dollars. Almost everyone is friendly in Cambodia, especially on the islands.
My final destination is a small village called M'Pai. It consists of one pier, an almost comatose coastline, half a dozen attractive beaches nearby, an oddly chic wine bar, more Khmer fishing families, about 50 expats (some backpackers, some older poets) and a total of about 300 residents. There are a few decent hotels around the back; all the action takes place at the beach location, where the bars consist of school desks in the surf. I get a room at Bongs. It has a cold water shower, a beautiful sea view and a wooden balcony. It costs $10 a night, and downstairs they make remarkable cheese and pesto sandwiches and cold Singaporean pilsner.
In sweet, sleepy, distant M'pai, hours blur into afternoons that, I think, could easily blur into entire lifetimes. Music floats under the palms, divers occasionally jump into boats, at night people run into the sea laughing because the local plankton is beautifully luminous: as you move around, the krill light up in tornado swirls of silver and blue, as if you the source of underwater fireworks.
How long will these glorious, paradise islands resist the roads, resorts and 7 Elevens that have wiped out virtually every island in Thailand and beyond? Three years? Six? Ten? Who knows, but for now they will remain in that perfect place where they are 94 percent untainted, but where you can buy good sauvignon blanc. Go now.
Essentials
Sean Thomas traveled with Experience Travel Group (020 7924 7133; experiencetravelgroup.com). They offer 11 days/10 nights, FB & HB basis covering: three nights Shinta Mani Wild, five nights Royal Sands and a boutique hotel in Phnom Penh, for £8,450 per person including all private transfers and flights from the UK
