Here we are… To happy travellers finally arriving in Cambodia after spending 1 year in Australia working, travelling, working, working, working.
We decided to go to Cambodia just 1 week before we had our flights, so it was pretty spontaneous. Paul had really wanted to go for a long time, because he has a special thing for a little island in Cambodia, where he used to work and live for 10 months. And to be honest we could both use the break after working our asses off to obtain the 88 days for our second year visa the previous 2,5 months.

So off we went to Cambodia with plans to stay between 2-4 weeks. We had no return tickets, since we hadn’t yet applied for our second year holiday visa. Once we got there we were gonna apply.

We landed in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and stayed with a friend of Paul for two nights. We enjoyed a nice massage, nice (and cheap!!) dinners, strolls along the busy buzzing streets and Paul got a shave at this guys ‘place’, which was just a chair and a mirror placed on the side of the street, exactly the same place it had been two years prior, when Paul met him the first time.

After a few nights in Phnom Penh we kind of had enough, as it happens when we’re visiting bigger cities, especially in Asia. So we took a bus down south to Kampot, which is a lovely little town with a beautiful river, lots of incredible restaurants, mountain views and breath-taking sunsets. Whilst in Kampot we met up with a few friends, had drinks at a few different hotels and bars and we went on one of the firefly/sunset-tours.

A little outside of Kampot towards Kep there is a hostel that hosts these firefly/sunset tours. We had a 30-minute drive down the river and stopped at this loooong boardwalk from where we could walk between the mangroves and enjoy the sunset overlooking the river. To be honest, we didn’t see any fireflies, probably because it was towards end of the season, but also because it was hardly dark on the way back – and you need total darkness to see those beautiful fireflies.

However, we met two super cool guys on this trip, who were the only other two on the boat, Gian Luca and Michael (huge shoutout to you two if you would ever read this, guys!) and we told them about this island, Koh Ta Kiev, that Paul and I were gonna head to a few days later. And guess what, a few days later we met them again ready to jump on the same boat towards the island with us!

So we finally came to that island Paul had been dying to return to and I was pretty excited as well, seeing as it was the island we met at two years prior. We stayed at The Last Point, which was the place Paul used to work at and where I stayed as a guest.

The island is a special place. You’ll find no roads, no grocery stores, no warm showers (okay there is 1 from my knowledge), no flush-toilets (I found 1 just the day before we left, damn it) and no WI-FI. If you are lucky, you’ll get a little reception with one of the internet-suppliers, when its not windy and when there are no waves or you have to walk to another hostel to get slightly better reception, but not really enough to make a phone call, unless you stand at a particular spot and even then, the call will be cut off all the time.

SO, it’s pretty basic. You wake up, have some breakfast, lay in a hammock, read a book, play some volleyball, have a swim, talk and laugh with the others (because you left your phone in your bed), have a bucket shower, have a drink and then it all starts over again. And this is how my days went everyday for two months, with the exceptions of days on which I would feel “extra active” and go for a walk to another beach, through the jungle or for dinner at another hostel.

On some days our hostel would host boat tours to ‘Elephant Rock’ which is a rock shaped as an elephant as you may be able to see on the photo. The water is actually this beautiful and you can jump into it from top of the rock. Since Paul volunteered while we were there, he would host some of these tours.

The boat would stop on the other side of the island, so that we could enjoy the (almost) always AMAZING sunset. I have seen so many incredible sunsets on the island, that I can’t even count them anymore. No matter how many boat trips you would go on, it would never be boring and it would never be the same. The vibe was always different and the people were different, however people were always happy. The boat stops at a hostel called Ten103, another lovely hostel, with great food and great people.

While we were on the island Corona was under rapid development. It was hard to feel the impact on the island. It was only something we heard of when someone had had access to the internet and read some news. We knew how people were fighting over toilet paper, how Italy was going into full lockdown, how schools and kindergardens in both Denmark and Germany shut down, but it still seemed so far away and we didn’t feel a personal impact – ofcourse no other than the fact, that we waited forever for Paul to get his second year holiday visa for Australia granted.

Due to Paul staying in Cambodia for 10 months a few years back he had to get a medical check in Phnom Penh, which was all good, so after getting that, he was told it would take between 7-35 days for the visa to be granted. Easy, we thought 35 days is the WORST case and it will probably only be 7 days. But then again, there is this thing called Corona, and we suspect that this was the reason why his visa was so delayed.

But then finally… The time came, when he finally received his visa, which we had been waiting 38 days for (!!!) and we could book our flights back to Australia after staying on the island for over two months and spending almost 2,5 months in Cambodia. Our way back wasn’t that easy though, so the struggle doesn’t end here. But lets keep this post as positive as possible and I’ll tell you what happened in the next post.

Eventually it was time for us to leave. We met so many beautiful people, made so many great memories and definitely had plenty of time to relax in a hammock and sleep in. Even though it was a great time, I also have to be honest – I was more than ready to leave when it came to an end. I think I just had too much relaxing. Yeah, it sounds crazy that I reached a point where I had enough of doing nothing, but it actually happened.
Paul was kept a bit more busy, while we were there, since he was working a lot of the time, so he didn’t feel it in the same way. But we were both not mentally prepared to stay there for two months, since we were only waiting for his visa to arrive, so it was a relief, when we could finally leave.
However, it was also super sad to say goodbye to all the lovely people and watch them wave at us as we got on the boat and knowing that we would no longer see or talk to these people everyday.