Salt, pepper and crab!

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Today we left Phnom Penh for Kampot, which is a shame, I would like to have stayed a bit longer, it made more of an impression than Bangkok did on me. I feel like there is still more to see.



The scenery seemed to change as we headed to Kampot, it was more rural, lush and green with more mountains in the distance too.



Once we were arrived, we opted to go and visit the salt fields and the pepper plantation, before a crab lunch and then some chill time on the beach at Kep.



The salt fields were certainly no Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia)! They only produce salt once a year, during the dry season, so there wasn't much to see. Just some dry fields and the salt store, where we could see the mounds of salt. The Pepper farm was more impressive though, we had a good explanation of how the peppers are grown and why the Kampot pepper is considered to be of a really high standard. I couldn't resist buying some red peppers as apparently they will enhance gin and tonic.... Nice!



We were really hungry as we had been on the road for most of the morning. The restaurant Harry took us to was sensational, it was on stilts over the sea with open windows to look out. The speciality was crab, so I had crab with peppercorns, as it seemed appropriate after visiting the pepper farm. It was phenomenal and by far the best meal I have had here... I am going to try very hard to recreate the sauce when I get home, but I am doubtful as when I asked for the recipe, they were a bit vague about the ingredients!



Kep was a lovely beach and it was nice just to lie and chill in the sunshine for a while. I have loved all of the tour, but it has been quite full on with early starts and a lot of activities... A chill at the end is just what we need. We suntanned for a while, then hired a hammock to lay in with a nice cold beer... Bliss!



In the evening, Harry took us to a local Cambodian karaoke bar across the river from our hotel. It was an interesting place, it overlooked the river, but was certainly a lot more 'spit and sawdust' than the other bars we have been to. The food was good though and we also ordered a few 'towers' of beer that we could serve our own beer from. We had some additional guests for dinner too, a rat ran past us many times and a few cockroaches were flying around - lovely!

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