Koh Rong
Koh Rong holds people longer than anywhere else in Cambodia. Twenty minutes up the sand from the ferry the bars stop, and at night the plankton glow blue when you swim through them.
Koh Rong in a nutshell
Koh Rong: what to expect
The numbers below come from 164,000+ planned stops in Cambodia on Stippl, and the rest from the guides we cross-check.
Koh Rong is seventy-eight square kilometres of jungle and white sand with almost no roads on it, and two reputations stacked on top of each other. Koh Touch is where the ferry lands and where the bars, the hostels and the one dive shop are. Twenty minutes up the sand, Long Set is empty before nine. The bioluminescent plankton is what everybody names first, best on a dark beach near a new moon, and the full-day boat tour ends by swimming through it on the way home.
Nowhere else in Cambodia do travellers stop moving the way they do here. A quarter of the stays planned here run five nights or more, against one in ten in Siem Reap, and the island closes the trips it appears on nearly three times as often as it opens them. Its real companions are the south coast and nothing else: Kampot lifts higher against it than any other pairing in the country.
Decide which island you booked, then hand it 3 nights. Koh Touch is the bar strip and the north and west coasts have no shops, no nightlife and often no signal. Take cash, because there is no machine, and expect the power off for part of most days. Avoid May to August, when the coast takes several times the rain the inland does, and skip the island entirely if you need reliable medical care.
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Anyone trading polish for space
The sand and water genuinely rival southern Thailand's, at the cost of power cuts, no ATM and thin wifi.
Budget backpackers
Dorms from a few euros, a full-day boat tour with lunch and beer for €7 to 17, and beach bars that are cheap by design.
Party travellers
Koh Touch has a bar strip, a weekly pub crawl and a beach-club festival night, the one place in Cambodia that competes with Thailand for this.
Divers and first-time divers
One dive centre on the island offers introductory dives through to certification, plus straightforward snorkelling off the boat tours.
Couples and honeymooners
Pagoda Beach and Naroth Beach are quiet, a beachfront bungalow costs a fraction of the Thai equivalent, and most people give the island 3 nights.
Anyone wanting to vanish
The north and west coasts have no shops, no nightlife and often no signal, and that is what they are for.
Maybe not for you: anyone who needs reliable medical care, since there is effectively none; anyone who needs an ATM or dependable wifi; anyone sensitive to sandflies; families with small children on the party beach; and anyone coming June to September, when the crossing itself becomes the problem.
The best time to visit Koh Rong
Dry season
November to April
The island's whole season: calm sea, reliable ferries, clear water and the plankton at its brightest. December to March is the narrower answer if you want the sea flat.
Wet season
June to September
The wettest stretch anywhere in Cambodia, with crossings cancelled, some places closed and the sea off the west coast dangerous. This is the coast, not the temple plain, and the two need separate advice.
The shoulders
May and October
Usable, cheaper and a gamble on any given week. The boats mostly run; the sea decides.
- January is the month most travellers plan Koh Rong for on Stippl, about 83 days ahead. Only 12.1% of Koh Rong plans are made inside a fortnight, the lowest share in Cambodia, which is what an island with a boat schedule looks like.
- The bioluminescence is a new-moon thing, not a month thing. Darkness is what matters and a full moon washes the plankton out entirely; the tour boats go on any calm night, so check the moon before the date.
- Khmer New Year in mid April fills the island rather than emptying it. Cambodian holidaymakers arrive in numbers, the opposite of what happens in Siem Reap; the beach bars are full and the boats are booked.
- Koh Rong's wet season can strand you. The ferries stop for swell from June to September and an island stay with a flight the next day is a risk; keep a night on the mainland at the end of a wet-season visit.
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Things to do in Koh Rong
Photo by Bram Wouters via Unsplash
Photo by Chris Slupski via UnsplashThe bioluminescent plankton
Swim at night on a beach with no lights, near the new moon, and take a snorkel mask to see it underwater, the thing everyone comes for. Free from Long Set Beach, or the end of any boat trip.
The full-day boat tour
Take the boat for snorkelling, fishing, a beach stop, a barbecue of what you caught, sunset on Long Beach and the plankton swim on the way home, about €10 to €20. The best-value day on the island.
Long Set Beach at dawn
Walk twenty minutes up the sand from Koh Touch to a different island: no bars, clean water and nobody there before nine. Free, and the resorts at the far end have the loungers.
The jungle trail to Sok San
Walk an hour straight across the island's interior to the seven-kilometre west-coast beach, the only way to see the inside of the island. Hot, muddy in the wet season, and a boat back for about €5.
Learning to dive
Take an introductory dive or a full course at the island's one dive centre, from about €70 for a try dive, on shallow reefs a short boat ride out. One of the cheap places in Asia to start.
A night in Preaek Svay
Sleep in the northern fishing village in a stilt house over the river, with the mangroves and seafood cooked by the family you stay with, about €15. The island as it was before the bars.
The neighbourhoods of Koh Rong
Koh Touch
The strip, ferry, nightlife
The two-kilometre strip where the ferry lands: guesthouses, hostels, beach bars, the minimarts, the dive centre and the only real nightlife on the island. For budget travellers and anyone who wants the boats and the bars.
Everything at the door, and the noise and the pier's water.
Long Set Beach
Four kilometres, cleaner, near the bars
Four kilometres of white sand immediately north of Koh Touch, reachable on foot in twenty minutes: cleaner water, far fewer people and a mix of hostels and bungalows. For beach days and for the balance.
Quiet sand and the bars ten minutes away, and a walk in the dark home.
Pagoda Beach
Tented camps, infinity pools
The island's upmarket stretch: tented camps, infinity pools, spa treatments and a pagoda on quiet golden sand with almost no through traffic. For quiet luxury and for the one genuinely comfortable part of the island.
Comfort and quiet, and the resort's prices for every meal.
Sok San Beach
Seven kilometres, west coast
Seven kilometres of sand down the west coast, the longest beach on the island, historically empty and now partly built on by resorts, reached by a rough road or boat. For long walks and a resort with its own beach.
An hour's walk on the same beach, and a boat or a rough road for anything.
Naroth and Palm Beach
Remote east coast, stilts, clear water
The remote east and north-east coast: a handful of bungalow places, one built on stilts over the water, and the clearest water on the island, with no nightlife. For total quiet and for a real digital detox.
The clearest water and nobody, and a boat for everything.
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Where to stay in Koh Rong
Stay on Long Set Beach for a first visit: four kilometres of white sand twenty minutes' walk from the ferry, cleaner water and far fewer people, with Koh Touch's nightlife close enough to visit. Most people give Koh Rong 3 nights on Stippl. Book something with a generator if power matters, and a room set back from the sand if the sandflies do.
Koh Touch
Hostels and guesthouses on the strip, dorms €5 to €10 and bungalows €15 to €40, loud until late.
Long Set Beach
Beachfront bungalows €18 to €55, hostels from €7 a bed, and a few small resorts to €90.
Pagoda Beach
€60–200
Tented camps with infinity pools and spas, €80 to €200, at prices that buy a mid-range room in Thailand.
Sok San Beach
New resorts along the long west beach, €70 to €180, reached by a rough road or a boat.
Naroth and Palm Beach
A handful of bungalow places, one on stilts over the water, €25 to €70, and no village.
What to eat in Koh Rong
Whatever the boats brought in, over charcoal, with rice and a lime-and-pepper dip. The island's actual staple.
Fish steamed with coconut milk, kroeung and egg in a banana-leaf cup. Cambodia's national dish.
Crab stir-fried with green Kampot peppercorns still on the stalk. Southern Cambodian, and the coast's signature.
The fish you caught that afternoon, cooked on the boat at a beach stop.
Burgers, pizza, pancakes and full breakfasts. Most of what Koh Touch serves.
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Koh Rong customs and what not to do
A working island too
Fishing villages on the north coast, families who have converted rooms in their houses and a local economy that predates the bars; the strip at Koh Touch is one corner of it.
Cover up away from the beach
Cambodia is conservative and swimwear in the village or at the pagoda is not acceptable; a shirt and shorts for the walk through Koh Touch to the pier.
Take your rubbish off the beach
Litter is the island's visible problem and a volunteer group runs weekly clean-ups; carry a refillable bottle, and take the plastic back to the mainland.
Cannabis is illegal here
Happy shakes and cookies are on the menus along the strip and the law has not changed; the enforcement is what is inconsistent, and the police do raid.
Do
- Bring cash for the whole stay
- Bring a power bank and tell people you may be offline
- Ask your accommodation which boat tour to take
- Join the weekly beach clean-up if it falls in your stay
Don't
- Swim at night after drinking, or alone at night
- Assume the ferry will run in the monsoon; build a spare day in between June and September
- Book Koh Touch expecting quiet, or Naroth expecting a bar
- Swim near the pier; the outfall is there
What a Koh Rong trip costs
Budget
€17–26
A Koh Touch dorm, meals at beach restaurants, a boat tour, beer.
Mid-range
€39–69
A beachfront bungalow on Long Set or Sok San, meals, boat taxis.
High-end
€130+
A tented camp or resort on Pagoda Beach with a pool and a spa.
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Fun facts about Koh Rong
The plankton around Koh Rong glow blue when the water is disturbed. They are visible to the naked eye, most vividly on calm dry-season nights away from the lights of Koh Touch.
Sok San Beach runs seven kilometres and had nothing on it fifteen years ago. It was completely undeveloped within living memory, and it is still reached on foot through the jungle or by boat.
Koh Rong is about 78 square kilometres, the size of Hong Kong Island. The often repeated claim that it is as large as Hong Kong is wrong by a factor of fourteen.
Most of the island's interior is jungle with no roads across it. Reticulated pythons live in it, and the walking trail from Koh Touch to Sok San is the only way through.
Koh Touch got its first resident police officers in the mid-2010s. Until then the island's one village ran itself, which explains a good deal about the beach-bar economy that grew up there.
Local tips for Koh Rong
Buy an open return
Fix only the outbound date; the return is whenever you decide to leave, which is the point of the island. About €20 return from Sihanoukville, and everything goes via Sihanoukville.
Short crossing, unreliable
Thirty to sixty minutes in good weather and cancelled in bad; the variation is the boat and the sea, not the distance. Take the morning sailing and check the day before in the wet season.
No ring road, no transport
Movement between beaches is on foot, by boat taxi for a few euros or by scooter on the few tracks around Koh Touch and Sok San. The remote-beach bungalows arrange the boat.
How long to stay
Most people give Koh Rong 3 nights on Stippl: a boat day, a beach day and the plankton night. Three is right; a week is common.
There is no medical care
Facilities are extremely limited and anything serious is a boat to the mainland in daylight. Sandflies are the everyday nuisance, worse than mosquitoes; repellent at dawn and dusk.
West coast, wet season
Swimming at the southern end of the long west beach is warned against in the monsoon, and people have drowned here after nights out. Buy your own drink and leave nothing in the bungalow.
Koh Rong questions, answered
Leave a spare day around it. The only way on and off is the ferry from Sihanoukville, and it stops for wind and swell between June and October, so a tight connection to a flight is the mistake people make here. Put a buffer night on the mainland into Stippl after the island, not before it.
Three or four nights. Across the Koh Rong stops planned on Stippl the usual is 3 nights, longer than Siem Reap or Phnom Penh get, because the beaches are spread right around the island and moving between them means a boat or a long hot walk.
Hardly anyone does it: 13.8% of Koh Rong stops planned on Stippl are a single night, the lowest share in Cambodia. Half of that night is eaten by the ferry at each end. The island only starts working once you have stopped counting days, which takes two at least.
Around twelve weeks for the dry season. Travellers planning Koh Rong on Stippl start about 83 days out, the longest lead of the Cambodian islands, because the good beach places have a handful of bungalows each and December through February goes first.
Different islands, roughly ten kilometres apart. Koh Rong is the bigger and busier one, with bars, tracks and scooters; Samloem is smaller, quieter and mostly walking. A local boat runs between them in under an hour, and plenty of people take it rather than choosing at all.
No, and none on Samloem either. Bring all the cash you will need including the ferry home, in small dollar notes, because change is a problem everywhere on the island. Card payment exists in a few of the bigger places and fails whenever the connection drops, which is often.
Every guide is written by the Stippl editors and checked against the trips our travellers actually plan. Spotted something out of date? Let us know.
Plan Koh Rong in Stippl
Day-by-day planning, stays and budget in one app, with every place from this guide already on the map.
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