Kampot and Kep

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We boarded the public bus at 7:30 am bound for Phnom Penh. The ride was fairly uneventful and I slept most of the way. There wasn't even crazy karaoke. We arrived in Phnom Penh at around 11, so we went to Romdeng for lunch. It's an NGO organization that helps with vocational training. The restaurant we went to specializes in Cambodian food and teaches young staff how to work in the restaurant business. The food was delicious. Trev bought a cookbook from them, it's called "From Spiders to Water Lilies". We don't think we'll be able to prepare fried spider treats for you at home though, unless we buy tarantulas at the pet store...
We did a little more wandering around Phnom Penh then met our group back at the bus station at 1:15 to catch the next bus to Kampot.

The highway to Kampot was very bumpy. About an hour outside of Phnom Penh our bus broke down. We all got off and sat in someone's front yard. They said another bus was on the way and would be there in 40 mins. It turns out the bus got lost (go figure) so about 2 hours later we finally were rescued. We kept going and after a few hours our new bus pulled over because it was having problems too...something was wrong with the suspension, but we were able to keep driving, just much slower. We finally arrived in Kampot at 8pm and had a quick dinner then crashed for the night.

We were woken up at about 5 in the morning by the sound of birds chirping. It turns out the hotel has a room that they use for an aviary to house the birds that regurgitate something-or-other that gets made into birds nest soup. Sounds disgusting to me. One of the women in our group is really nosy and was asking all the employees at the hotel about the birds, and finally a security guard said to her "there are no birds"...okay, questions are a bad idea...

We met up with our local guide, Ki, and went on a countryside tour. First we stopped at the salt flats. Kampot is known throughout SE Asia for it's salt. It was the wrong season though, but we still got to see what was going on. Next we stopped at a small fishing village. Every evening the men take their boats down the river and fish all night, then return and sell the fish in the early morning to the markets. There were some kids there who loved having the full attention of a group of foreigners. They loved having their picture taken and posed for lots of pictures. After that we topped at a pepper orchard and learned about the pepper process. We bought a big bag of red pepper, so we'll see if customs will let it through. We kept driving and arrived at Kep, a small seaside town that used to be a weekend retreat for French Colonial settlers. We had some lunch the went for a swim in the ocean. The water was so warm there! It must have only been a few degrees cooler than air temperature - overall not too refreshing, but it was my first swim in the ocean here, so I was happy. On our way back to Kampot we stopped at a local crab market. Our group bought 2 kg of crabs and 1 kg of prawns for $12 and they steamed them for us. We brought them back to Kampot with us to take on our evening river cruise. Just as we were arriving in Kampot it started raining, but we still got on the boat. It was so rickety and decrepit, but we survived and it didn't sink. We ate the seafood and continued getting rained on - there wasn't any chance of seeing the sunset, so the boat turned around early.

We didn't have to leave Kampot until 10 am, so we got up early and our guide took us to the local market. I wanted to buy a Khmer-style vegetable peeler and shredder, so she bargained for me. We both really enjoyed that market because it was just for locals, and no one really spoke English, so no one could harass us! Our guide also picked out a bunch of neat treats and produce for us to try, so it was really fun! We had breakfast at a little NGO restaurant called Epic Arts cafe that helps people with disabilities. Our server was visually impaired and deaf. I was so happy to support them and see that someone is helping people with disabilities in Cambodia - in their culture they are often disregarded. We took a minivan and car to Sihanoukville (about a 2 hour drive).

Love Court

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Comments

[Katherine]

i've been drinking bird nest soup every night (i only get the homemade kind back at home). the only reason why i drink it is because it's supposed to be good for complexion. i’ve been taking the store-bought kind online (e.g. www.geocities.jp/hongkong_bird_nest/index_e.htm of famous branded only of course) which is directly mailed from Hong Kong. this would be at a more affordable price.