Sihanoukville & island koh rong sanloem

[Sihanoukville - koh rong sanloem (M'Pai bay - sunset beach) 6 days]

Hello again,
We are currently sitting on the car making our way to Bangkok, reflecting the last days which were filled with beach life, making lots of music and enjoying time with newly made friends.

We started in Sihanoukville, the coastal city that is the gateway to get to the islands Koh rong and Koh rong samloem. It has some nice beaches but the city in itself is not very pretty and appealing because it's quite dirty and construction works are happening everywhere. You could see that Chinese have taken over some parts of the city somehow because there were roads with shops mainly run by Chinese and mainly in mandarin language. It reminded us of our time in Beijing. Anyways, we ended up having a really delicious chinese noodle soup 😋

On our second day, we headed to Koh Rong Samloem, and specifically to M'Pai Bay the relaxed backpacker friendly part of the island where food and accommodation were still affordable compared to the other side of the island that had resorts and were more touristy.
The beach was a little bit dirty but the vibe was really nice. We ended up playing live music four nights in a row, and hanging out afterwards until late. We even had our own beach rave on the sand with trippy lights. It felt like being on a beach festival.
For me as a musician it has been like a dream coming true, playing music directly on the beach with the waves and soothing wind in the background. I also got all the food and drinks for free 🥰
We also hiked to some other beaches that were more untouched and not (yet) occupied by shops and accommodation - for example the clear water bay which had like the name suggests clear blue waters.
We met so many beautiful souls on our stay here and are super grateful for the magical time together. Shoutout to Oliver, CJ, Keana, Sascha, Andi, Kerstin and many more others.

On the forth day, we took the slow boat to sunset beach on the other part of the island Koh rong samloem. It is one of the most beautiful beaches that I have ever seen. So clean, clear and turquoise blue. We stayed at a beautiful bungalow directly at the beach. The most stunning accommodation so far. It was also quite expensive but we got a discount for the accommodation (and food, drinks) since I played live music for 2 nights. That was again a wonderful experience, in the end more musicians joined us and we had great jam session. I was afraid of not being able to play music on my traveling but it turns out music follows me anywhere I go ☺️

Meeting so many people of different walks of life makes you reflect more on what path you want to pursue while balancing various aspects like sustainability​, quality of life​, happiness, stable income. What I have found is that if one dares to stray slightly out of their comfort zone to explore alternative ways of living it comes with an over-proportional benefit in other areas of life.

Obviously, we also feel humbled that we even have the choice to do whatever we want to do. It is nonetheless a huge privilege that only few people get to have and even fewer people that are brave enough to live it out. It remains to discover if this recent insight is just a short-lived euphoric experience while travelling or might lead to some significant decisions later in our life.

Cheers,
Kim and MinhLeggi altro