Koh Rong is small enough to get around in a few days and slow enough to lose a week on. There is always more on your list than you can fit in, and on an island where most things just happen on their own, that is fine. The best day here is usually the one where you woke up with no plan.
A few things really belong on the list: the empty sand on the west side, one night in the glowing water, one day on a boat. The rest is on offer too, and it is great if you have an evening or a bit of extra budget left over next to your beach time. Choosing up front gets you more here than booking an extra night.
So where do your Koh Rong days go, and what do you save for next time?
Torn between the two islands, or between the bays? Everything you need to make that call is on our Koh Rong page.
Long Beach on the west side
This is the beach you got on the boat for, and the one most travellers still manage to miss. Seven kilometres of sand, water clear enough to see your feet, and almost nothing along the edge. While the sand at Koh Touch is packed, here you can sometimes sit for half an hour without seeing anyone walk past.
The beach itself is free. You get there in fifteen minutes by boat taxi for about €5, or in around an hour on foot straight across the island. Take water, and food if you are staying, because there is almost nothing for sale.
Stay until the end of the day. The west side looks out over open sea, so around six the sun drops straight into the water in front of you, and that is the best free moment of the day on Koh Rong.
Our verdict: absolutely, and give it a whole day
Swimming with the bioluminescent plankton
After sunset you walk into the dark water and everything around you lights up with every move you make. It is thousands of tiny organisms reacting to movement, and it is the thing Koh Rong is known for around the world. There are very few places in Southeast Asia where you can see this so easily.
From the beach it costs you nothing. Join a boat that takes you out to a darker spot and you pay about €10. Both work, but only when it is properly dark.
Check the moon before you plan your evening. Around a new moon the effect is at its strongest, and at full moon the moonlight drowns it out and you will see very little. Never go in alone and never after drinking, because that goes wrong here every year.
Our verdict: a must, and save it for the darkest night you have
The boat trip with snorkelling, fishing and sunset
This is the most popular activity on the island, and for a lot of backpackers the highlight of their stay. You stop at several snorkelling spots around Koh Rong, where you swim among tropical fish, and in between you hang a line over the side to catch something yourself.
It is a full-day trip that finishes out on the water: first the sunset from the boat, then a stop with the plankton. So if you do this one, you do not need to plan a separate plankton night.
When you book, just ask whether there are life jackets on board. That is not an odd question here and nobody will look at you funny for asking.
Our verdict: the one activity you actually book instead of sorting yourself
The jungle path from Koh Touch to Long Beach
Koh Rong is mostly jungle, and there is exactly one way to see any of it: on foot, straight across the island. The path climbs away from the coast, runs through thick greenery and gives you a few viewpoints on the way where you see the island and the sea at the same time.
It is free and takes about an hour, with some properly steep stretches. Wear shoes you can climb in, take water and put on mosquito repellent.
Walk there and take the boat back. That way you get the jungle, your whole afternoon on Long Beach, and no hour of scrambling back at the end of the day.
Our verdict: go for it if you want something active, just not in the full midday sun
An evening on the beach in Koh Touch
In the evening the barbecues fire up along the water in Koh Touch. You point at your fish or your skewers, pay per piece and eat with your feet in the sand. Everything on this island has to come in by boat and you notice it in the prices, but with the catch this fresh it does not feel that way.
After that there is usually a fire show on the beach, every night and normally around nine. It costs nothing: you just sit down with a beer for around €1.
Bring enough cash from the mainland. The cash machine on the island is sometimes working and sometimes empty, and that is not something you want to find out when the bill is on the table.
Our verdict: an evening or two is just right
Beach hopping by boat taxi
Long Beach is not the only empty beach. Sok San, Palm Beach and Coconut Beach are spread along the coast and are pretty different from each other: one has a few beach bars, another nothing but palm trees.
You go from bay to bay by boat taxi, about €5 a ride. String a few together and you are busy from morning to evening, so this is a day and not something you squeeze in.
Agree what time you will be picked up again, and do not leave that to chance. On the quieter beaches there is not always someone around who can just run you back.
Our verdict: this is a day out, not a quick stop, so plan it as one
Kayaking or paddleboarding early in the morning
Early in the morning the water around the island is often glassy, and that is exactly the moment to grab a kayak or a paddleboard. You paddle along the coast, past little bays you cannot reach on foot, and you have most of the sea to yourself.
A kayak or board costs from about €5 an hour, and one to three hours along the bays is a nice length. Later in the day the wind picks up and it gets a lot less relaxing.
Stay close to the coast, because the current here pulls outward. On a paddleboard, use a leash, so your board does not drift off the moment you fall in.
Our verdict: you are not getting up early for the view but for the flat water, and it is worth it
Got time to spare on Koh Rong?
Further than Koh Touch
Koh Touch is where the boat comes in and where your hostel is, and it is a good spot for a sunset beer. The best sand is further along: walk or take a boat on to Long Set Beach or Sok San, where you get kilometres of white beach and far more room. That is the beach you came for.
The plankton on the right night
The glowing water is one of the most beautiful things on this island, and it works best around a new moon. So have a quick look at the calendar: if the moon is full, you will see very little of it, even on a paid boat trip. At new moon it works fine from the beach, and otherwise €10 gets you a boat out into the dark.
The jungle path by day
The path through the jungle between the bays is a great walk, and you do it in daylight. There is no street lighting on this island, so in the evening you take the boat taxi: it is quicker, cheaper than you think, and you get to ride along the coast in the dark.
The fire show on the beach
Every night there are people on the sand with burning ropes, and it is a brilliant show to watch from your chair. Leave the jumping to them, because the nearest hospital is on the mainland, forty-five minutes away by boat. Order another drink and enjoy it.
Our top five on Koh Rong
Only got a few days? These are the five we would do no matter what:
- Long Beach on the west side, staying until the sun drops into the sea
- Swimming with the bioluminescent plankton, ideally around a new moon
- The boat trip with snorkelling, fishing and sunset
- The jungle path from Koh Touch to Long Beach, on foot there and back by boat
- An evening at the barbecues and the fire show in Koh Touch
Still got time after that? Grab a kayak or a paddleboard early in the morning while the water is still flat, or take the boat taxi past Sok San, Palm Beach and Coconut Beach to find out which beach here is the quietest.
So what do you really have to do on Koh Rong?
Honestly? Nothing on this list is compulsory, and on this island that is truer than anywhere else in Cambodia. Koh Rong is not a place with sights to tick off, and the travellers who get the most out of it are nearly always the ones who dropped their schedule after the first day.
If we had to pick just one thing: get in the water when it is dark. Half an hour swimming in a sea that lights up with every stroke costs you nothing, looks like nothing on any photo, and is exactly the bit of Koh Rong you will still be telling someone about a year from now.
And keep one morning completely empty. Walk the jungle path to the other side, sit down on the empty sand of Long Beach and do nothing for the rest of the day. That is why you got on the boat, not for the list you just read.
