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Published: December 21st 2012
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We had a fairly early start and headed off to have breakfast at our fast becoming favourite breakfast spot. Today of all days breakfast was late….the bakery had no baguettes. We decided to have noodle soup, surprise, surprise. It took ages to come, but it was freshly made and still yum, but it made us very late for our tour. Lucky the pickup point was only two shops away. We set off with our tuk-tuk driver and picked up another two passengers along the way. The first point of call was the caves of Phnom Chhnork. It was a little bit of a walk to the caves across a few fields but nothing too strenuous. Neither was the climb up to the cave. The shapes of various animals including an elephant can be made out. There are also many stalagmites and stalactites that make the cave very interesting and quite eerie as the only light available is from the torch we brought with us. The interesting part of our cave exploring was only just about to begin. There is a second entrance/exit to the cave that the OH volunteered everyone to exit from. It was a downhill climb over rocks and
squeezing through narrow passage ways always heading down. Eventually after two skinned knees and multiple bruises on my legs we made it through the second exit.
Next stop was to a local fishing village. Nothing like I had imagined. The fishing boats a small and much of the work is very manual. However if you want fresh fish this apparently the place to come, albeit very early in the morning so we had missed it that day. Because they fish at night the entire fisherman were of course asleep. Our jaunt around the country side took us next to a pepper and fruit farm. Just driving between each place was interesting in itself, watching and seeing everyone going about their daily lives. The pepper farm was small and the work seemed very labour intensive, but we did get to see where that beautiful green pepper came from. Damn shame we can’t bring any back to Australia with us.
From the pepper farm we headed to Kep. We left our partners in crime to await their boat to Rabbit Island and we headed down to the crab markets. Yummo. The next couple of hours were spent devouring a plate
full of pepper crab and having a good old convo with our driver. The preconceived idea of the pepper crabs was completely fulfilled by the real experience. Our driver had to head back to collect our fellow travellers from the boat and we spent an hour or so lying in hammocks near the beach. Kep doesn’t really have much of a beach to speak of but it was very relaxing anyway after such a wonderful lunch.
When our driver returned with our intrepid fellow travellers we headed back towards Kampot. On the way we stopped at some salt fields. It was unfortunate but they are not working at this time of the year so there wasn’t a lot to see except empty fields awaiting their next influx of water and workers. The road back into Kampot was very dusty as there is heaps of road works between Kep and Kampot. I was glad I took my scarf and we used it to filter the dust on the way back. After all that crab dinner was a definite no go. Lazy day planned for tomorrow as we head back to Phnom Penh.
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