Our private excursion was booked to depart at 1000 hours and was to take 1 1/2 hours to get to Sok San Beach. We were going on a long tail boat, which is not the most comfortable mode of transportation in my opinion. We made our way down the beach to the kiosk after breakfast. Turns out we weren’t going to have the tour guide that we had booked, as he and his wife had an emergency with their dog, and were going to have to take it to the vet on the mainland. So we were given a local. This was disappointing as his English was not good at all.
There was lots of great scenery on the way and we saw what looked like many resorts along the beaches.
Passed a boat with what looked like a typical excursion group onboard. So happy we booked a private one.
The dock that they usually tie up to was kind of out of order and so we were dropped off at the next dock. Unfortunately, our guide could not stay there and would come back for us. We arranged a time to meet up and headed on our way to hopefully find the Survivor beach.
We appeared to be in a local village and proceeded to ask a few locals if they knew where Survivor had taken place. Most did not speak English and had no idea what we were talking about, even when we mentioned Survivor. This wasn’t looking to good. Were we even in the right place?
We found a path off to the left and took it. Ended up at a dried up waterfall and so turned around and headed back to the village.
We came across this place and went in to ask if they knew where Survivor had taken place. He mentioned that there were the remains of one challenge set up between a couple of buildings and set us off in that direction.
We SCORED and felt like a couple of kids in a candy shop, so excited to have found one of the challenges. Apparently, Julia had won this immunity challenge from Season 32, Episode 9 “It’s Psychological Warfare” which aired April 13, 2016.
We still really wanted to find the flags that Paden and Christine had found when they were here last year and so set off back down the beach to find the little bar where they had seen the flags. They had also found another challenge that had been set up on the beach. There was this set up and spoke to the person working on it, hoping he knew if this was another Survivor challenge. He told us that they had taken away the Survivor challenges and were setting up some games as the Prince or King of Cambodia was visiting the following week.
Have I mentioned lately how HOT and HUMID it is here? The beach was long and wide open with no shade. It was just spectacular fine white HOT sand. We walked for what seemed like hours and hours, but in reality was probably around 1 km. We were pretty disappointed as we came across no such bar so finally gave in and turned back.
We decided to take a hidden road that we had seen back as walking in the hot sand was difficult and we were tired from both the heat and the walking.
We came across the large resort near the end of the road and we were cutting through the bar area when I looked over to my right…OMG there they were!!! Survivor Flags!!! They had been moved to behind the check-in desk of the resort. We tried taking a few selfies, but finally asked one of the ladies to take a picture of us both with the flags. Our day had been made.
Headed back to the dock to be picked up by our guide and we were off to snorkel. Snorkeling was just okay and it was difficult to climb in and out of the long boat, so we only did one stop. Doug wasn’t snorkeling anyways. Plus we were tired from the long trek along the beach in the HOT sun.
Enjoyed the ride back to our resort on Koh Rong Sanloem and spent the rest of the afternoon lounging around on the beach enjoying a beverage or two or three. I enjoyed Sex on the Sara, while Doug had one of his usual favorites, Mojito.
We stayed on the beach until it got dark as we were just too tired to bother to move. Finally got up and had dinner at the resort, as we apparently don’t tend to venture out far to eat.
Total tally for today’s Fitbit count is 15,052 steps and the equivalent of 42 floors. That was all the up and down on the beach in the sand. No wonder we were tired.
Tomorrow is another travel day. One day I would like to go back to this island and hope to experience the beautiful beaches and crystal clear waters without all the jungle debris from the storms.
The owners saw us still sitting there and we mentioned that our ride hadn’t shown yet. Waited some more. Finally the owner got a hold of the ferry company and discovered that they had forgotten to pick us up. By now it was 1155, so the owners grabbed us a tuk-tuk from outside of our BnB/Guest House to get us there. The owner phoned the ferry company back to let them know that we were on our way. They were going to pay for the tuk-tuk as we had already paid for transportation with our ferry tickets, which we had purchased through them. I am guessing that the ferry company will reimburse them the transfer portion. We arrived at the dock around 1205 and the ferry had already pulled away, but was in the process of coming back to get us! Thank God as these ferries fill up days in advance. We had to jump from dock onto the boat, which was about 3 feet, while we were still wearing our day packs. It was scary!! Also didn’t get to take any pictures.
We were hungry and decided to grab a pizza, beer and dessert.
Watched a delivery arrive which was quite fascinating.
We had a nice dinner at the resort, but it was not cheap here considering we are still in Cambodia.
We enjoyed watching a kid practice his fire twirling talents.
Old & Lost 