In the Middle of Nowhere

Hello everyone!

I want to apologize for the multiple, super late posts... I have a perfectly good explanation for it and this post will tell you why…

04 of August…

After a night at the dive centre staff house in Sihanoukville, we loaded all our stuff on a mini-truck and went to catch the boat to Koh Rong. The boat trip was about 2 and a half hours long, which passed relatively fast… partly because of the gigantic mattresses on the top deck, that allowed us to sleep for another hour or so, and partly because of the numerous Spanish tourists on board with us, sharing all their adventures in the neighbouring countries (Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, etc).

After a quick boat change in Koh Rong , we set off again for Koh Rong Sanloem, which literally translates to “the further away island of Rong”. The trip was fairly fast, roughly 30 minutes, after which we finally arrived to our final destination: the Eco Sea Diving Centre and Bungalow Resort.  The location was incredible… it is the only Resort on this whole side of the island, right next to the local village (known either by its local khmer name, or even just as “Village 23”), of barely 100 families. We soon discovered that the resort is relatively new, just 5 months old, and that it still needed a lot of work to be done.

After meeting our dive instructor Fia (short for Sofia) and enjoying a nice cup of fresh iced tea, we moved from the bar to the dive shop, which is located in the middle of the water, almost at the end of a long pier in front of the resort. Here we sorted out all the bureaucratic paperwork with Fia and received our first training manual:  Emergency First Responder… to be read by the end of the day.

Luckily for me some guests were about to go out on a fun dive, so I got out all my new gear and jumped at the occasion to test it all out. The dive spot was really close, at about 200m from the resort, under which we found the remains of an old wooden pier, probably washed away from the close-by village during a heavy tropical storm some years ago… the visibility was horrendous (about 1m), but we managed to spot out lots of rabbit fish and crabs living in the remains... oh, and also an enormous boxfish… completely different from the small cute yellow ones I got used to in Bora Bora. Anyhow... the purpose of my dive was to test out my new equipment, not sightseeing, so it wasnt too much of a disappointment. We came back up and headed back for shore (everything works perfectly, by the way).
Quick shower, a moment of relax, and soon after it was already dinner time! Yay!
Dinner and lunch here are served as buffet…. So I really had to control myself to leave something for the other guests to eat… in any case, the general menu here is rice, vegetables, meat, chicken or fish (with vegetables) and a soup (again, meat chicken or fish… … … with vegetables)…surely I can’t complain about not eating healthy!

Oh, I almost forgot... the reason i'm posting everything together late is that we don't have any internet on the island and electricity only from 7 to 11 in the evening... digital detox!