Still on Ko Rong Samloem for the holidays. We move from the Jungle Bay Bungalows, to a nondescript guest house for two days, to the paradise of Lazy Beach.
Below is a place we stopped several times for lunch, the Dolphin Bay Resort. They have three puppies.
Because the simple bungalows of Jungle Bay were booked for the Dec 31 and Jan 01, we stay in a modest room behind a general store on the beach. Our friends Ulf & Susane move to the Lazy Beach Resort, a place they discover on their wanderings on the island. We join them for New Year’s Eve.
This is what we’ve been searching for. In three months of Asia travel, Lazy Beach is the best place we’ve seen so far, tropical-paradise-wise.
Too bad about the name, with its connotations of vice. I would rename it Butterfly Beach, because flights of enormous colourful butterflies are everywhere.
Oh, and its LOGO sucks.
After a BBQ buffet, we gather on the beach.
I realize we’re holding beverages in every photo above, but it’s New Year’s Eve, after all.
The same day Ulf & Susane move out, we move in for our final few days on the island.
Lazy Beach has several things going for it.
- It’s isolated by a 1.5 kilometre jungle trail crossing the island. True to its name, this would deter 90% of humanity from going there. It does have its own boat to the mainland, which is how we go back.
- It’s run by a UK person, who had the stroke of genius to realize that people don’t equate ‘tropical paradise’ with ‘bags of fetid garbage’ and ‘mountains of discarded construction debris’ and ‘damaged speakers crackling out Bob Marley 14 hours a day’. It is spotless and tranquil.
- No WiFi or other connectivity. There’s an expression in IT: ‘That’s not a bug, that’s a feature.’
- It costs US$ 65 a day, which is a lot for this part of the world, but a fraction of what we’ve paid in other exclusive resorts. (The kind we stay in all the time.) (Well, once every blue moon.)
- Excellent food in the restaurant.
- There is no outside/through pedestrian traffic. It nestles between two steep hills. (See bullet one).
- It’s not listed in the usual booking websites, so it attracts an elevated level of clientele. Like us. (See bullet four).
The new inhabitants of bungalow 17.
We hike up to Sunset Peak to view the, er, sunset.
As the sloth of the holiday season passes, expect a return to more frequent blog entries.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Sight or Insight of the Day – Lazy Beach
Something to add to the Koh Rong Samloem bestiary besides spiders and snakes – monkeys and hornbills!
As we walk to the Lazy Beach Resort, we pass an open area over which about a dozen hornbills fly from one tree to another. (I was not quick enough to get a photo – I borrowed this from someone else, but it’s a genuine Koh Rong Samloem hornbill.)
We also have monkeys. A troop of them inhabit the jungle trail between Saracen Beach and Lazy Beach. These are well-behaved monkeys that stick to the treetops, not like the manic, human-acclimatized delinquents in Lopburi.