Swimming in the stars in Cambodia

A second guest post from Joe. Having first told us of his cross-country covid trid across Canada, now a drunken late-night adventure in Cambodia and a story that truly captures the spirit of serendipity.

Tom

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It's easy to feel amazed or blown away whilst drunk, right? In fact, I once had moment a few shots deep where I spent half an hour absorbed by the moon's beauty, only to be told later it was a hanging lamp perched off the end of a dock. And I'm sure we've all had moments where we've felt drunkenly amazed by something that's not so amazing through sober eyes.

Now I'm not saying that our naive drunken wonder is a bad thing, nor is the actual feeling in the moment any less of a valid feeling than being sober and seeing something sensational, but when you find out you've really been staring at a high-suspended lamp bright enough to hide the pole that holds it, it does take away some of the magic from the story.

But have you ever woken up in the morning and thought, that was so awe-inspiring that you simply have to return again sober to experience it again? This is a story about that kind of situation.

The story starts as all nights start on Koh Rong, a now very populated party island off the coast of Cambodia, with a beer on the beach watching the sunset. As the night went on and the hands on the clock turned to beer bottles, we heard of a small party happening in one of the beach bars down the way and staggered our way towards the flashing lights and oh so common calls of Justin Bieber's 'Sorry'. Yes Bieber, we're sorry too, and part of me wonders how many minutes I've lost in my life wandering towards that song seeping from a barely working speaker in some beach bar in South East Asia.

The party itself is nothing to note here, but, at what we thought was the end of the night, around 3am, as we were sitting on the beach sharing our last beer and our most outrageous stories (you can blame the alcohol for that last one), a couple of strangers wandered past us. I don't remember exactly how we got talking, but they were very eagerly trying to persuade us to go swimming with them.

Being in the state we were, we obviously said yes.

As we got up and approached the water, beers in hand of course, we were surprised to hear the other group calling to us to walk to the left. Now I'm no genius in directions, especially under the influence, but I was pretty confident in myself that the ocean was, in fact, directly in front of me. But being the sucker for adventure that I am, I turned and followed these random strangers anyway, down the beach and accompanied by my tipsy troop of travellers.

It was about 5 minutes of walking and chatting until I noticed the sand had started to turn to grass, and the ocean was drifting further and further to our right (or were we drifting to the left? Darn that drunken navigation again).

Before long, and apparently before any of us questioned anything, we were in the middle of a pitch black forest, with only one tiny path to follow, and only a couple of people having lights. You can imagine it as large, thick, tropical trees, with roots that seem to defy gravity and invade the space between the ground and the sky, weaving and piling on one another. The water from the ocean continued this warfare by often making advancements on the path, with nothing but a conveniently-placed log to balance across; rocks made up the no-mans-land amidst this war between tree, ground and ocean making it fairly difficult terrain to walk through, even if the sun had been aiding us with its light. But we were in complete darkness, aside from the couple of phone torches all 9 or so of us were following, and, sorry to bring it up again, we were drunk.

Under the encouragement of our new friends/guides, who'd convinced us (quite easily I might add) that we were going to a magical swimming spot, we stumbled, tripped, and hardly balanced our way through this woodland track. With many laughs when someone fell, and the thumping and twig snapping equivalent to a herd of elephants, I could only think that at least we were good for keeping snakes away. At several points our trusted leaders must have lost their way, as we often doubled back, once stopping at a rocky out post where one man bravely (or stupidly) tried to clamber across, convinced it was the right way, but only to be battered by the waves, tossed aside and spat back out with a sullen look on his face, like a toddler who'd just put their hand near a flame despite being told it's a bad idea.

After at least half an hour walking, no, clambering, through this woodland maze of darkness, we finally made it to the other side to a small beach completely surrounded by water.

Finally!

We'd made it.

Or so we thought, but what was so special about this spot? And why couldn't we just have swum where we started without having to go on this Amazon Rainforest expedition? Not to mention we'll have to go through it again on the way back.

We wouldn't find the answers to our questions just yet.

It was the moment where our fearless leaders started looking for the 'shallow spot' to cross the large river that intersected the beach and ocean that I really lost confidence in our mission. Here I was, holding the same empty beer bottle I'd been carrying for the last 35 minutes, watching my friends wade thigh deep in this potentially disgusting water (I mean, I'd seen the other waterways on the island). With absolutely no idea how to get back, I found myself with no choice but to follow.

After crossing the what felt like the Cambodian Nile, we wandered a further 10 minutes down the beach until we finally settled. Looking around I saw no light pollution, absolutely gorgeous stars but, all in all, a very similar place to where we'd started our trek. Not wanting to bring a downer on the spirits by pointing this out, I made a few jokes and finally relinquished my hold on the aforementioned beer bottle.

Anyway, we were drunk and joyous and so all stripped off and started running to the ocean, all happy to have our prize, all excited for a swim, all acutely aware that we could have had it 45 minutes ago.

It was at this moment the magic happened.

Diving head first, deep into the water under the waves, which were pleasantly calm on this side of the island, it wasn't until I opened and wiped my eyes that I saw it. The pure fluorescent twinkling of the stars. But not in the sky, I quickly realised, but in the ocean!

Imagine a sea of piercing blue fireflies, collected closely together and glimmering in the water. Not just deep below, but all around me. As I swam deeper the brightness grew more intense, more dazzling and yet somehow more serene. Noticing that these tiny spectacles of neon blue were collecting around my fingers, I moved my hand around in the water, only to notice the lights trickling from my fingers like sparks from a wand. Following and flowing with my movements, these sparkling stars of the sea formed breath-taking echoes of my hands, creating astonishingly bright shadows and trails one could never imagine coming from anything outside of fantasy.

Appearing only with our movements, these glittering flashes of light both symbolised and created joy for me. We must have spent hours diving and playing in the ocean's tranquil waves, sometimes allowing our bodies to be still for a moment and watching the ocean sky slowly ebb away, only to disturb the water again and bring more magic forth to the world. Truly feeling like a mermaid, I let my drunken wonder fully take over and swam on my own, overjoyed in a childlike presence rarely found on the party Island of Koh Rong. In this moment I truly did not care if this was a trick, like the hanging dock-light, or if my drink had been spiked, or if I was going crazy. I was in true bliss, and it seemed that the ocean was in true bliss around me, surrounding my whole body with its light in what felt like a symbiotic connection directly to nature.

Now many of you may have heard of bioluminescent plankton before, some even seen it and have experienced what I'm talking about. If you haven't, then I hope you experienced my story as I did, from the side of complete unknowing leading into wonder. If you have encountered these plankton before I hope your experience was a beautiful one! All in all, this serendipitous experience caught me completely by surprise, being in a new and strange place, following random strangers down a shady path and having absolutely NO idea what I was about to encounter. And then experiencing the ocean come alive with light. If that's not what travelling is about, then I don't know what is.

Needless to say, we woke up with the hangovers of our lives, but with memories for a lifetime.

Posted: 22/03/2022

Written by: Joe Ashley (@mojojoejoe95)