4 Rivers Floating Ecolodge

After my night in Phnom Penh I was scheduled in Tatai Village, near the coastal city of Koh Kong, for three nights at the newly opened 4 Rivers Floating Ecolodge. This was the part of the trip I was most looking forward to, and for the most part, it didn't disappoint.

Getting there was quite troublesome, though. When I got to the hostel in Phnom Penh, I looked at the bus info they had posted to see if the bus went to Koh Kong, and it did. I don't know why I didn't look at the times, though. I must have been too tired to think straight. The buses left at 6:45 and 7:00 in the morning, which I didn't realize until I came down for breakfast at like 9:00. That was worrisome. I asked the staff members if they could help me get there, but they'd never heard of the village, the resort (understandably) or the island it is adjacent to. I asked if there were any travel companies around who could put me on a minibus or something, and they couldn't direct me to any of those, either. Finally I asked to call the resort itself, to see if they could help me. One number was voicemail system, though, and I left a message. The cell phone number, the guy at the hostel said, was not a valid Cambodian number, so he didn't try it. I went to double czech it at an internet cafe, and leave a message for the resort owner on the Skype messenger system, then asked a different person to try the cell phone number after I didn't get a call back from the two messages I already left. Luckily, the cell number was valid (I don't know what that guy was thinking), and the resort staff was able to call a taxi company, give directions to the river area, and send the driver to my hostel. The initial part of this process took about four hours, then once I got ahold of a real person over there, I was packed up, paid up at the hostel, and in a taxi within about a half hour.

The taxi cost $55, almost ten times what the bus would have cost, but that's about the same price I pay for Supershuttle to drive me an hour to the airport, so I considered it a reasonable price. The dude sped, too. I think he got me there in under four hours; the bus ride would have been probably five to Koh Kong, then I guess I would have had to take like a half hour taxi ride to the proper area, so I saved quite a bit of time with the taxi. I wish I'd been able to leave in the morning, though, so I could have enjoyed the resort more.

The owner picked me up by the riverside when the taxi got me there, and we drove over the the boat launch and took a ten minute ride down the river to the resort. Here's what it looked like a little while after I I got there:


It was still warm enough to swim, and the river was warm, so I took advantage right away, so as not to waste a whole day without swimming.

Here's what the tents look like on the outside:


You can roll up the flaps on all sides of the tent, so the whole place is quite well lit.

I couldn't believe how well furnished these things were. I've never seen so much furniture at a hotel. This is the sitting area. Those basket pillars in the back right are lamps, but none of them worked.

Cambodia was another place where proper sheets are not a given. At the hostel, I was given only sheets, and no bedspread, but I was surprised to find that here, there was just the bedspread. It seemed inappropriate considering how much energy it takes to wash a bedspread every time a new guest comes and the fact that it's an ecolodge. I'm hoping they're not cutting corners there. Gross.

This is the only (relatively) solid, stable wall in the tent. This family with a few obnoxious boys came around the day before I left and ran everywhere they went, causing this mirror and the bathroom mirror behind it (and well, everything else in the resort) to shake violently. I was talking to one of the owners and she said one of the kids actually broke a piece of one of the docks or something, and she was going to have to put up some rules for guests to follow to avoid them inadvertantly destroying her resort. I felt kind of bad. She was very stressed.

Since the lodge had just opened up, there were a lot of little bugs and unfinished business. The cabinet here is supposed to hold a tv, but the tvs for several tents hadn't arrived yet. I wasn't concerned about that, though some of the other bugs affected me.

One of them was the electrical outlets. Not all of them worked, so the lady owner had to spend a lot of time going around looking at all my lamps and making sure I had proper light by the couch and/or bed, since she knew I'd be reading a lot while I was there. It ended up being okay, but I wouldn't have minded a bit more light.

Another glitch was my shower. I was mildly disappointed with it when I first got there. The website showed a large porcelain tub in the middle of the tent, and even though the floor plans didn't reflect that, I got it stuck into my head that I'd be able to sit in a tub and look out my window onto the river. I realized when I got there that that kind of placement would be totally impractical, not only because of plumbing, but also for privacy's sake, since most people there would probably not be solo travellers like me. It was saddened to not be able to take a hot bath, though, even if it was in a proper bathroom (where there were still plenty of windows to gaze out of). In fact, I wasn't even able to take a hot shower. I wasn't sure if the lack of hot water was part of the eco-factor or just another bug. I didn't bother to ask, though.

Anyway, due to the humidity in the area, the varnish on the shower was still tacky, even after three days, so they moved me to another tent after my first night, and even knocked off one of my dinners from the total bill, because there was a lot of confusion over the move. When I got back from an excursion to Tatai Waterfall, my tent had been cleaned, and one of the staff members came in after me, seemingly to indicate for me to move my stuff. When I got there, the project manager was taking a nap on the couch (the staff quarters weren't finished yet), and the employee woke him up and had him move to my other tent. Then I noticed something amiss (I forget what), and the owner came to look at it and realized no one had cleaned this tent, so they took like two hours to do that, while I read on the patio commons. When I went back to my room later, some dude walked in on me in my own bathroom. I was kind of pissed about that, heh. There are no doors of course, only curtains, and not all of the people there have learned the importance of announcing oneself, even if they think the tent is empty, before entering.

My new tent did not have the big bed. I was disappointed with that change.

One of the cool little touches in the rooms was the rugs:

Moving on, here's the totally suite patio area:

I spent a lot of time during the day on the patio, reading, listening to music, going for a swim, then coming back to read some more. There's a little gate in front that you can open and there's a little ladder in the water. It's nice to be able to walk out of my tent and jump right in.

This is the island across the river:

There were kayaks available for use, probably for free, and I had planned on going kayaking at least once, but then my neck and shoulder blades started acting up, so I figured I shouldn't push it, and had to refrain from any exercise besides swimming and walking. Boooo-urns.

These are all the common tents, connecting the two arms of private tents. The big one is the restaurant, the one on the right is for staff, and the one on the left is the library, with some books and DVDs. The rest is all seating, and this is also where the boats dock.

The owners had a puppy that even I, a cat person, had to admit was really cute. She was very comfortable with people and treated the whole place like it was hers. She spent some time with me on my dock, and was waiting for me to get up one morning, sitting quietly on my patio.

Then another time I found her in my tent. I hadn't zipped it up all the way, and she shimmied inside and played around in there for a while as I was eating. She left a present for me, which I prompty passed off onto the owners, haha: