Qualla: Koh Rong Sanloem

Koh Rong Sanloem: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wikirictor, CC BY-SA 3.0. Late on 14 May 1975, a Thai fishing boat dropped anchor off the eastern shore of Koh Rong Sanloem carrying thirty-nine American merchant sailors who had no idea where they were. Three days earlier their container ship, the SS Mayaguez, had been seized by Khmer Rouge forces in disputed water further out in the Gulf. The crew had been shuttled from island to island and then to the mainland at Kampong Som, where the local commander refused to take responsibility for them, so the boat simply carried on down the coast and stopped here. Half a century later, the same water is crossed by ferries full of people with dive masks, and the island's chief problem is what to do about the resorts.

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Image: Wikirictor | CC BY-SA 3.0

Koh Rong Sanloem: Three Days in May

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TomFitzhenry, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Mayaguez affair is usually described as the last battle of American involvement in Southeast Asia, which makes it sound tidier than it was. While the crew sat under guard off this island, US forces assaulted Koh Tang, forty kilometres to the southwest, on the assumption that ...

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Image: TomFitzhenry | CC BY-SA 4.0

Koh Rong Sanloem: The Bay That Kept an English Name

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Treehill, CC BY-SA 4.0. The island's great eastern bay is a three-kilometre crescent of white sand with a name that belongs to nobody who lives here. Saracen Bay is named for HMS Saracen, a British survey brig that charted this coast in the late nineteenth century and left its own name on the chart, as ...

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Image: Treehill | CC BY-SA 4.0

Koh Rong Sanloem: A Kilometre Wide at the Waist

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Treehill, CC BY-SA 4.0. Nine kilometres north to south, four across at its widest, and at one point barely a kilometre from coast to coast — Koh Rong Sanloem is mostly edge. The interior is hilly and was once almost entirely jungle, rising to 210 metres in the northwest, where one summit is known as Mon...

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Image: Treehill | CC BY-SA 4.0

Koh Rong Sanloem: Village 23

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Treehill, CC BY-SA 4.0. The administrative centre sits at the northern tip and is called M'pai Bai, which in Khmer simply means Village 23. It is the island's plainest place and, for a long time, its friendliest: family-run guesthouses, brown-yellow sand, a waterfall a short climb above the village and ...

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Image: Treehill | CC BY-SA 4.0

Koh Rong Sanloem: Who Holds the Island

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TomFitzhenry, CC BY-SA 4.0. A lighthouse stands at the southern tip, the last working relic of the French protectorate, whose road network across the interior has long since been swallowed by vegetation; the lighthouse now doubles as a military post. The Cambodian Navy keeps its main installation on Saracen...

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Image: TomFitzhenry | CC BY-SA 4.0