I’ve already outlined our somewhat stressful adventure trying to get to Monkey Maya from Kampot, but once we arrived at this secluded beachside hostel on the edge of the jungle and they handed us our welcome beers life was all good.

Monkey Maya is located on the southern coast of Cambodia in Ream National Park about 45 minutes from Sihanoukville proper.  It is isolated, with no other resorts, restaurants or shops within walking distance.  They are not on the power grid so they only have electricity by generator from 5 PM until midnight.  There is no wifi.

We first heard about Monkey Maya from a German couple we met on our cave trek in Vietnam.  They couldn’t say enough good things about it and described it as the kind of place you plan to stay for a night or two but end up staying a week.  We had been trying to figure out where to head for our first stretch of real beach time on this trip and this sounded like just the place.

There is very little to do at Ream Beach.  The beach itself is a long semi circular bay with a little strip of white sand, mellow surf and water that is the absolute perfect temperature – cool enough to be refreshing but warm enough that you could bob around in it all day.

We spent our first day there just lying on the sand with our books, running into the water every so often to cool off.  We got a little sunburned that day so the next day we moved our lay-about reading time up to Monkey Maya’s awesome deck.

We took walks on the beach, played card games, explored the tide pools and, one day, got up enough energy to do a little trek into the jungle to a nearby village.

One night we befriended a British couple and went on a late night swim with them to check out the ‘shiny plankton’ that the staff had told us about.  It’s hard to describe but basically it was like swimming through fairy dust; the more we moved around the more the plankton glowed.

Mostly we just took it very, very easy.  It was a very different type of relaxing than our time in Kampot.  There we were trying to stay put but be productive (doing yoga, working on blogging and online classes.) At Monkey Maya we were forced to really disconnect and just appreciate the slower pace of life.

Getting back to nature in this somewhat primitive place meant encounters with the local wildlife.

One night before getting in bed I looked down at the end of my mattress and perched there was what looked like a grasshopper about the size of my hand.  Before I even had time to panic about sharing my bunk with this creature it flew away.

We were really and truly in the jungle and, even though the bugs were somewhat terrifying, I’m so glad we got this opportunity to see some of Cambodia’s amazing natural beauty.