Joining Rabbit Island Holiday with Visit Cambodia Travel, you will enjoy a great memorable moment and experience the ancient temple of Angkorian Style and Rabbit Island Beach, sunbathing, snorkeling and swimming.
Koh Tonsai or Rabbit Island lies just off the coast from Kep in the province of the same name – a 3hr drive or so from Phnom Penh. Formerly known as Kep-sur-mer, the popular and fashionable pre-Khmer Rouge seaside resort is currently experiencing something of a renaissance. (Firstly, there aren’t really any rabbits whatsoever on the island but supposedly the island itself is actually rabbit shaped, if seen from a certain angle, though we reckon that depends on how many Angkor Beers you drink beforehand!)The island is at present, pretty much unspoilt – i.e. there’s nothing much there – except a couple of beach shacks doing drinks, fried rice and the ubiquitous, (for Kep), crabs, plus a few basic bamboo huts for back packers wanting to get seriously off the beaten track. (No full moon parties around here). How long it’ll stay that way remains to be seen and there are frequent rumours of Khmer/Taiwanese/Korean businessmen/generals/developers constructing resorts on the island’s main beach. (A nice sandy strip with clear water and flat land behind.) Local myth has it that the land’s already been sold to developers for a large sum of money, on at least one occasion, only to find that a crafty local fishing family’s claims were actually non-existent and no legitimate deeds or paperwork ever appeared.
Anyway for now it’s frequented by day-trippers, half a dozen at a time aforementioned backpackers, and the occasional All Points East tour group getting some beach time in before heading back to Phnom Penh and the reality of flights home!
Not much to do on Koh Tonsai except sit around on the clean, sandy beach, have a dip in the clear, sheltered water or drink a cold one and crack open a crab, though for the energetic a trail does lead around the island if you want to explore further.
Koh Tonsai is a short, 30 minute, boat ride from the pier in Kep. A day trip to Koh Tonsai is included on our Beyond Angkor tour; all our off-the-beaten-track Cambodia trips can be found here and for more detailed info on the island try our friends at Travelfish. Cheers!
I once, in my younger backpacking days, got crabs from a hostel bed in Malaysia. They weren’t the kind I wanted. They were the kind that required a trip to the chemist to get a pharmaceutical-grade shampoo. Needless to say, me and crabs in Asia have a bad relationship.
So it was refreshing, here in the Cambodian seaside town of Kep, to find the kind of crabs you want to get. Kep is famous for the delicious crustaceans and the best place in town to find them is at the Crab Markets along the shoreline.
Every morning boats arrive from fishing expeditions in the nearby waters and islands off the coast. Their hauls are offloaded at the market and within hours find their way onto the plates of diners. My lunch one day is a pile of fresh juicy crabs cooked with the green pepper corns, which this region is also famous for (although it’s called ‘Kampot pepper’ for the nearby town of Kampot where many of the farms have bases). And for just 3 or 4 dollars, the food is a bargain.
Kep itself is a nice place to stop for a couple of days. The beach is not the best you’ll find along the southern coast of the country but it seems popular with Cambodians on the weekend.
The vendors with food, drink, deckchairs and inflatable toys aren’t so interested in me. They’ve got their eyes set on the local families who are arriving at the beach with cars overflowing with children and holiday supplies.
There are quite a few guesthouses and hotels here but they’re decentralised so there’s no hub of town, as such. Life in Kep is laidback and, like the structure of the town, is based around the beach rather than efficiency or practicality.
A walk around the mountain that overlooks Kep gives you a view out to the ocean on one side and the green fields on the other. It takes longer to walk around the mountain than around the town but it gives you the better perspective of place that only height can provide.
You realise from the mountain that, although it’s a pleasant part of the country, there’s much more to explore. I can see out in the water an island known as Rabbit Island. That’s tomorrow’s destination.
Source From: http://www.timetravelturtle.com and http://www.visitcambodiatravel.com