M-Pai Bay – Cambodia

Today I will take you on a digital trip to M-Pai Bay village. During my 6 week trip through Thailand and Cambodia this is one of the islands I remember most. What exactly is the reason for this? You can read this and more in my blog about M-Pai Bay village, Cambodia!

What is M-Pai Bay?

M-Pai Bay is a small fishing village located on the island of Koh Rong Samloem in Cambodia. The island has several destinations that can only be reached by boat. Me and Niels decided to go to the less touristic village M-Pai Bay. Which also made it a challenge to come here.

M-Pai Bay village - Koh Rong Samloem, Cambodia

Our trip to M-Pai Bay

First we took the boat from the town of Sihanoukville to the main part of the island of Koh Rong Samloem. This part of the island was easily accessible. Once arrived, it was quite a challenge to find a boat that could take us to the smaller fishing village.

Eventually we were able to take one of the goods boats that brought new (food) supplies to the villages every day. This boat trip was quite an experience as we were surrounded by local Cambodians who didn't see many tourists on this boat. The boat trip took about an hour and we arrived at our final destination M-pai Bay Village in the dark.

Goods delivery boat

What we didn't know was that at the exact moment that we brought a visit to this place the pier of the island was broken. So we had to walk through the water with all our luggage, including backpack bag and a smaller bag with all the important stuff like passport and camera's, up to our waist. A nice experience and fortunately the locals were ready to help us get our stuff dry ashore.

The pier of M-Pai Bay village

As always with our travels we had not yet booked accommodation for the night. So we decided to hunt for the perfect place to spend the night on an island. After a short search we found the perfect bungalow. It was located at the quiet side of the island where almost no tourists came. Our bungalow had only the basic essentials like a watertap, shower, electricity, mosquito net and last but not least a hammock.

The bungalow

From the balcony of the bungalow we overlooked the sea, of which we could admire the sunset in the evening. A wonderful place on a fantastic island. It was also a nice place to dive and snorkel. Only for me personally this was not a success because of all the loose rocks in the water.

The view from our bungalow

The best thing about M-Pai Bay village was the atmosphere, the tranquility, the locals, the cheap life and not having a wifi network. This combined with the few tourists made it the perfect place to relax and see how the locals live on the island and walk along the long beach. There are only a few places that still have the looks and the feeling of the real cambodia that M-Pai Bay had in 2017.

Main road of M-Pai Bay village

Cinnamon Video

Also make sure to watch this outstanding video made by Niels of this incredible place! I guarantee it will be worth your time!

https://cinnamon.video/watch?v=177887473316136346

The future of M-Pai Bay village

My expectation is that the last period and the coming period will change a lot for this beautiful island and the locals. Although they were not (yet) fully dependent on tourism, this will change in a fast pace. Chinese investors have leased large areas of land to build a resort for Chinese tourists which are already in large numbers on the neighboring town of Sihanoukville. M-Pai Bay is going to change drastically and chances are that this will bring mass tourism. Unfortunately, this is often accompanied by loss of character of this great island, changes for the locals and damage to nature in the form of pollution.

The local population will certainly not benefit from this new flow of tourism. Since the Chinese resort will mostly employ Chinese personnel. All very unfortunate to see and know that these times are coming. A new visit to this beautiful place would certainly have been high on my list.

Bonus pictures

Thanks for reading! ✌🙏