We met Hannah, our dive instructor, at 7AM at The Dive Shop. We repacked our bags to leave some stuff at the Sihanoukville location. Their tuk-tuk driver drove our group to the ferry on the far side of town, grabbing some food on the way in. Mat and I purchased some food as well since we didn't know what to expect but the boat was stocked with donuts, watermelon, tea, and coffee. A two-hour motor brought us to Saracen Bay on Koh Rong Sanloem.
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| Boat to Saracen Bay |
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| Departing Sihanoukville |
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| Neat island temple |
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| Traditional fishing boats |
Mat and I spent from 10 AM to 4:30PM doing classroom work (aka watching a DVD and filling out quizzes) stopping for lunch - a delicious vegetable curry that was provided. Even though it was long hours doing the class work, our "classroom" was awesome: a desk facing the beach on top of the shop so we'd catch the breeze and with a thatched roof that kept us shaded from the sun and dry from any passing rain shower. The two shop dogs - Deco and Pasha - kept us entertained as we watched them protect their little slice of beach below. There was even a cat that came upstairs, meowing and demanding attention to the point where it sat on Mat's work; cats are the same everywhere!
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| Our classroom |
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| Island cat sitting on our work |
We finished our test then hit the one-mile trail to Sunset beach on the other side of the island. It took us thirty minutes to trek through the jungle, pretty neat but the back side had a steep, rocky descent. We arrived just in time for sunset through the dramatic clouds. We checked into our rustic bungalow at Robinsons (no electricity or running water, just a single light in the bungalow and shared stall that was toilet/sink/shower) and jumped straight into the ocean to cool off.
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| Saracen Bay |
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| The Dive Shop island storefront |
Next, we hit up the bar, all the Dive Shop employees were hanging out there plus one student, Lucas, from Germany. The employees were all celebrating Hannah & her boyfriend's last few days with the Scuba Shop; on Saturday they go back to the mainland and get ready for their next job of managing a dive company on the Cook Islands. With all the employees celebrating and reminiscing together, Lucas was excited to have some friendly non-employee people to talk to and hang out with. He said he's the only one in his class, just him and his instructor, and that tomorrow was his last day. He joined us for dinner at the restaurant next door. He was a funny guy, he told us about his year living in Australia working on a cattle ranch.
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| Trail to the back side of the island |
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| Sunset Beach |
Eventually, we headed off to bed around 8:30PM. Our bungalow is cute but it's 50 yards back from the beach so we don't have much of an ocean breeze, even with the door wide open. I saw some sort of large rodent scurry along the baseboard inside the bungalow but it never bothered us or our stuff. Mat did not want the mosquito net down since we didn't have enough airflow. We fell asleep listening to the waves crashing on the beach.
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| Our bungalow |
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| View from our bungalow |
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