I don't want to be too harsh on the food here, because I spent a year looking forward to my time on Lazy Beach, and loved almost every minute of the days I've just spent there. The English owner Richard is either a very smart, or a very lucky man.
He has spent six years in Cambodia and fell in love with a local girl. Her father happened to be ex-navy, and between them they managed to persuade the navy to let them lease a beautiful, west facing white sand, palm fringed beach on a lushly forested, near-deserted tropical island two hours off the mainland.
This looks as Koh Chang and scores of other Thai islands must have looked decades ago. How long it will survive like this is a moot point. The Cambodian government have sold off development rights on many of these island to overseas investors, mainly Chinese and Russians. KRS's big sister Koh Rong will be the site of the largest proposed development, with an international airport carved out of the jungle at its heart, a road hacked around the coast, and a series of megaresorts planned over the next decade.
Anyways, clever chap Richard has got in their first, and is making hay while the sun shines.
So what of the food? Lazy Beach provides an extensive menu of backpacker classics not limited to banana pancakes, predominantly Western-style, but with a smattering of Asian favourites too. All portions are extremely generous (particularly the monumental salads) and thus good value too. They do good things with fruit and eggs in the morning: though bacon at 50 cents a slice reinforces the island's isolation). The mashed potato patties taste a lot better than they sound. The fish is served a variety of ways, most of it employing a deep fryer in one way or another, though the staff seemed none too sure of the differences between battered and breaded. Perhaps they were rather battered themselves on the potent local weed.
Lazy Beach's one bum note is the lack of fresh fish. Perhaps because of their transfer schedule - the transfer boat leaves the island with departing guests at 08:30, then returns from the mainland with new guests around about midday - in the five days we stayed the kitchen never seemed to have made the market early enough to snag anything fresh.
Which rather begged the question as to why they weren't out on the water catching something fresh themselves.
The other bum note, almost literally, was the always shirtless, cut-off traveller-panted-wearing waiter Jay, who strutted around with his hoisted plates as if he was on the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week - he made a point of hitching his Sihanoukville Market rip off Dolce & Gabbana and Emporio Armani pants high above his waistband.
Fashion faux pas are forgivable. What is not was Jay's pungent underarm odour, which hit our nostrils like a wall of First World War mustard gas each time he place our food infront of us, often leaving us gagging when we should have been salivating.
Despite these last two caveats, Lazy Beach comes highly recommended as one of the few spots in the world where you can really get away from it all, two hours by bumpy boat off Sihanoukville on the Cambodian coast, itself five hours from the nearest international airport at Phnom Penh (not exactly an international hub).
Catch it while you can. And remember to bring Jay some deodorant!
Pack lots of dollars, there's not much else to do here other than eat and drink.
Call +855 16 214 211 or + 855 17 456 536 to make your reservation: www.lazybeachcambodia.com
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