We’d teamed up with some friends who we’d met on the bus from Thailand to Siem Reap. They’d heard about a deserted island off the coast of Sihanoukville that people could stay on so we decided to check it out.

There seems to be numerous names for it, but the boat man who took us there called it Bamboo Island, so I’ll stick with that.

The boat trip over was madness. We’d got used to some pretty rough travelling in Cambodia, but this was crazy. We’d been waiting for the boat on the beach for an hour when I finally managed to convince the ‘organiser’ to tell me which boat was ours. He pointed at least ½ km out to sea. With the waves crashing in as they were it didn’t take an expert to work out that there was no way that boat was coming in any closer.

We had ALL our kit with us, rucksacks, passports, money the lot. One by one we had to make our way to the boat. My boyfriend, Tim was in up to his chest. I was in over my shoulders, with my back pack held as high as possible over my head, waves crashing into my face and a spindly little boy of no older than about 8 on the boat desperately trying to reach down to grab my bag from me. How the hell our kit remained dry I will never know.

Locals were getting on the boat too. At one point Tim had his bag taken from him and hauled on the boat, only to be handed a baby to carry by a woman as she ploughed her way through the waves.

Thinking back it was hysterically funny, but at the time it was quite stressful - especially when Tim was handed a baby!

It was worth it though. We reached the island to find exactly what we had been promised: nine tiny bamboo huts fringing the eastern side of the beach with one bamboo hut that formed a café area. One toilet, no showers and that’s it. The whole of the rest of the island was deserted except for a small military base in the jungle in the centre of the island. Only three of the nine huts were occupied and two of those were by us. Welcome, once again, to Paradise.

You had to walk through the jungle for 10 minutes to get to the western side. The one family that lived on the island who ran the café had scratched out a ‘path’ leading the way and assured us there were no snakes or dangers of any kind. Half way through we came to a clearing and found ourselves staring at two HUGE guns. I’m not quite sure whether ‘guns’ is the correct word to use here. Think old style 30 foot long barrels that you would expect to put a cannon into. It freaked me a bit at first until I saw the two soldiers that were ‘guarding’ them – asleep in hammocks. We tiptoed past them and walked through to the western beach.

WOW!!

The sun had just started to set over the water. It was really calm on this side and lapped up to a golden beach which was about 50 feet wide and completely empty. Not a sun lounger, umbrella or even another human being in sight. Our only company was lots of ants. And even they disappeared once you moved closer to the water’s edge. Bliss.

As the sun started to fade away we made our way back to our huts. Once again passing through the military base I spotted a soldier coming towards us. My heart started beating faster as he got closer, why I’ll never know. He met us with one of those massive, gorgeous grins that every single Cambodian seems to have. He spoke no English but he was trying to get us to try some fruit and pointing up at the tree where he’d obviously taken it from. I could not make out what he was calling it, but it was chewy and tasted a little like banana. So much for scary soldiers.

We stayed six glorious and way too short days in the end. During the day some of the Sihanoukville hotel owners were organising boat trips to the island, but after 3pm we were always the only ones left. There was precious little to do of course but I think our travel pals are now Peaknuckle champions, soon to be ousted by the Bamboo Island kids.