Even this remote, beautiful island comes with a catch. Walking along the beaches, you feel almost completely alone – Sok San Beach and Coconut Beach are often deserted, and only occasionally do shy visitors approach the water to dip their toes into the small incoming waves. Koh Rong Beach has a few party hostels at the far end; apart from their music drifting across the sand, the main nuisance are sandflies attack you once you’ve reached your sunbathing spot.
These pinhead-sized biting midges, commonly called “no-see-ums,” are notorious – some bites feel like pinpricks. At first I wasn’t bothered: there was no redness, itching, or swelling. But after about 24 hours intensely itchy clusters appeared and I could hardly refrain myself from scratching.
I have waited too long to share my travel, surf and nurse experiences since I have left the comfort of Europe back in July last year. Eventually I have to start somewhere and I will start in Kampot:
Settling Down by the River
After a volunteering opportunity (which I’ll share in a future post), I’ve decided to settle in Cambodia’s southern province and countryside for a while.
A colleague from my NGO and I decided to rent a place together—with a refrigerator, an absolute must if you’re keen on preparing your own food and maintaining a varying diet to stay healthy. While food in Cambodia is extraordinary, after fried rice, rice with pineapple, and rice with spices and vegetables, I had my fair share of rice!
We chose a spot away from “Down Town Kampot” called Fisher Island, located on the other side of the river. Here, we have our own community with even cheaper laundry services and a local market where we buy fresh fruits and vegetables. The bungalow is very basic, made of wood, with occasional visitors as you’d expect. I’m so glad I haven’t seen any cockroaches, though I’ve had other visitors: next to small monkeys, big monkeys, and real monkeys!
Working on My Websites from Kampot
I’ve chosen to stay here and work on both of my websites: my doula website and my nursing/surfing blog. This project was outsourced to a German agency that utterly and frustratingly let me down, so here I am again in the IT business, creating my own websites. While my doula website is already running, it took me some time to create my blog website. Now that it’s up and running, I’ll be sharing past and current stories of my nursing and surfing experiences around the world.
Exam Prep and a Birthday Trip to Koh Rong
Meanwhile, I’ve received news from both nursing registration authorities -New Zealand and Australia- that I need to pass my NCLEX-RN and IQN exam, which will take place at the end of June. I’ve been studying for almost two months now, and I decided it’s time for a weekend trip to Koh Rong island as a birthday treat.
I’m sitting on the floor of my very amazing bathroom, journaling… This is exactly how I want my future bathroom to be: adjoining the bedroom, half‑roofed, with the bathtub under the roof and an open‑air shower under the sky. A little zen garden. A big mirror.
I’m in Virgina Beach, northeast of Bali, on my first night in a private bungalow after leaving Europe for good. No roommates. No medical students. Just a remote village with very few international people — those who settled here decades ago and blend in beautifully.
Jan -my new private driver- drove me here after showing me the campsite for tomorrow’s hash run. It was my first time riding on a scooter with both legs on one side, the way locals do when they’re wearing a sarong. He’s teaching me little words in Balinese and suggested I visit Gili Trawangan, which is already on my travel plan for next month.
My “mother hash” is Bali Hash House Harriers 2. Our “feel good manager” Dewi, is a member of this non‑competitive social running club. Her husband is the hare -he sets the trail in advance using paper marks. Participants either walk or run the route. I joined Dewi’s group of hashers, and we decided to leave early (not warming up with drinks) and walk the long trail.
Hashing started in 1938 in Kuala Lumpur, when British expats ran to “hash out” their weekend hangovers. Today there are hundreds of local “hash houses” around the world, including Bali Hash House Harriers 2, which describes itself as part of this global, loosely affiliated network of social running clubs.
It was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon: collecting cashew fruits, meeting people from all over the word, enjoying nature, and sharing different foods that each and everyone brought. After the feast, I was officially adopted into the hashing world by my own baptism.
The highlight came at the end: Burning Worm – Release the Kraken. A huge, handmade Kraken had been built especially for the occasion. Watching it burn in the dark felt dramatic, communal, and slightly wild -exactly the kind of memory that makes a first hash run unforgettable.
I came across this NGO in my Lonely Planet: Sungai Watch. The organisation works to stop plastic and other waste from reaching Indonesia’s oceans by cleaning rivers, installing waste barriers, and involving local communities in the process. Volunteers can sign up for clean-ups at different locations, usually for around four hours. I decided to join one on a Friday morning.
The meeting points are often shared as Google Maps coordinates, because the clean-ups take place far from Bali’s polished tourist scenery — often behind residential areas, along riverbanks, and near illegal dumping sites. Sungai Watch has run weekly volunteer clean-ups since 2022, alongside its river-barrier and waste-sorting work.
I am staying near Keramas Beach on Bali’s east coast, not far from Casa De Brillo (= home). Here, the beach is all black sand and a powerful left reef break, with local surfers flying through the air. But the river we were cleaning that day eventually flows into the ocean. I was curious to see this less visible side of Bali and to learn more about the island’s waste-management challenges.
Three other volunteers -from Italy, Japan, and France- and I joined the regular Sungai Watch crew behind a residential area. People had been throwing household waste into the river: bags of daily rubbish, clothes, mattresses, tiles, cement bags, and construction debris. Along the riverbank, we found burned waste and the remains of daily offerings, including sweet wrappers.
By the time we arrived at around 8:00 a.m., the regular crew was already working. We continued until about noon, then weighed what we had collected: 410 kg of rubbish.
The number was shocking, but what stayed with me was how little visual difference four hours of work made. The crew returns every Friday, yet waste continues to appear in the river faster than it can be removed. One clean-up cannot solve a problem that begins upstream, at household level, and within broader systems for collection, disposal, education, and enforcement.
Bali does have policies aimed at reducing plastic waste, including a provincial regulation on single-use plastics, but implementation and enforcement remain uneven. Illegal dumping and open burning are continuing challenges, which means community-led clean-ups are essential, but they cannot replace reliable waste collection and long-term public education.
Volunteering with Sungai Watch was dirty, physically demanding, and at times frustrating. Still, it was one of the most meaningful things I did in Bali. It made me look beyond the beaches, surf breaks, cafés, villas and perfect sceneries you can see on instagram.
Four hundred and ten kilograms later, the river looked only slightly different. But I did not.
A water purification ceremony is a spiritual cleansing ritual, recommended when you’re feeling stressed or exhausted — and at least every six months if you can. This week, ours took place at Pura Taman Pecampuhan Sala, a hidden jungle temple in Bangli where two rivers meet and nine sacred fountains feed the holy spring water.
Dr. Agung, head of Traditional Medicine at Bangli National Hospital, led our melukat ceremony with calm authority and deep respect for the tradition. We began with a few simple but important meditative basics: forming a lotus flower with our hands, the right hand leading as a constant reminder to do the “right thing” along with the gesture to cleanse your head, face and heart three times with water. Our group was small, sharing the purification site with a handful of tourists who had come to witness and join the ceremony.
Together, we moved through around 21 offerings to the gods -greeting Mother Earth, praying to the god of the sky and to the spirit of the water where the two springs converge- while wandering through the holy spring water, letting it wash over us as if it were pulling away negative energy and restoring an inner balance I hadn’t realised I’d lost.
In Balinese Hindu belief, the melukat ritual at Taman Pecampuhan Sala uses sacred water to cleanse body, mind, and spirit of negativity and spiritual heaviness. Standing under the flowing springs in this quiet ravine, I felt the weight of recent weeks soften, replaced by a quiet steadiness that stayed with me long after I changed out of my wet sarong.
Preparations for the cremation ceremony had already begun before I arrived in Ubud, Bali. Our “Feel Good Manager” from travel4med told me it was a rare public event to witness and not to be missed. The grand royal cremation ceremony -known locally as Pelebon– is held in honour of a deceased member of the Ubud royal family. It is a vibrant, deeply spiritual procession featuring a traditional multi‑tiered cremation tower.
The different parts of the tower are spread out and built around Ubud’s main square, then carried on the shoulders of hundreds of men in traditional Balinese costumes. The colours of the cremation -purple and gold- feature prominently on two large pieces:
Bade (cremation tower): Represents the sacred Mount Meru and acts as a symbolic ladder connecting the human and the divine to transport the body.
Lembu (sarcophagus): Shaped like a sacred bull, it receives the body before it is purified through fire.
I found a perfect viewing spot on the first floor of a restaurant opposite the cremation site and watched the procession. The Bade and Lembu sarcophagus were carried from the palace to the cremation grounds, continuously accompanied by Gamelan orchestras, drums, and cymbals.
I eventually made my way down to the cremation grounds, where I bought my first sarong and settled into a shaded spot. From there, I joined other onlookers in witnessing the final preparations and the burning of the sarcophagus.
