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Published: August 25th 2010
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I took a bus to Kep and stayed the night, before heading to the island. Kep is a bizarre place. It used to be a South Beach of Cambodia, where the rich and famous had grand villas by the sea. Then during Khmer Rouge, the city was vacated, like most of Cambodia's city and it never came back. Today, the town is full of ruined blackened remains of once grand palaces. Yet, they all have brand new walls around it. It has something to do with Cambodian property laws - I guess you need fences around to maintain ownership. So the whole town is largely plots of either empty land or ruins of grand villas with new or newish stone walls around. It has a very spooky feeling to it. The beach near the town is quite bad with murky waters and dark sand, so it is unlikely the town will ever regain it's former opulence, specially since Sinouhoukville became the beach destination of choice, and yet the fences around the properties are maintained. Gotta admire their owner's optimism.
The main attraction in the area is Rabbit Island - an island right off shore with beautiful beaches, a laid back atmosphere
and rustic bungalows. And when I mean rustic - I really mean rustic. I checked out all of the guesthouses on the island - all 6 of them 😊 Only 3 places had bungalows with attached toilet, only 1 of those had western toilets, but it had no toilet seats and the shower was a bucket full of murky water, so I opted to stay in the place with an Asian squat toilet. I normally hate these things and refuse to use them, but it was the best option on the island. The place had a proper shower, but no sink! Trying to brush your teeth from a shower head is an adventure 😊 Just kidding, the water was quite murky, so I used bottled water, but it is still super inconvenient to not have a sink. You don't really realize it until you don't have one.
The electricity is only available from a generator from 6 pm to 10 pm, or whenever the hosts decide to go to sleep 😊
Anyways, the place was quite rustic, but it had a hummock in front and overlooked a fantastic beach. All of the guesthouses on the island crowd on one beach,
and each one has at most 5 rooms, so the island never has more than 50 people, I think. When I got there, it was raining, so for the first couple of days the tourist population of the island never reached 20! The weather was fantastic - it's the rainy season, but rained only once the day I got the island.
Speaking of getting to the island. It was raining and the sea was rough, and the boats are quite flimsy little things, so I was shitting myself the whole ride, thankfully it only takes about 30 minutes.
The island itself is quite small, I walked around it in 2 and half hours. The middle of the island - is a jungle clad mountain. Quite a nice setting really. So I spent 6 wonderful days, swimming and chilling in my hammock with a book. This place is not for everyone - I met one French dude who got there in the afternoon and couldn't wait to get off the island the next morning. But I just love these quite beach settings. In fact the only reason I got off the island is because I read all the English language books
the place that I stayed at had and the other guesthouses didn't have any books from I could see. The island doesn't even have a store - I ran out of mosquito repellent and had to hunt for it - 1 guesthouse had some for sale 😊
Despite all these little inconvenience, it more then made up for it by having spectacular sunsets.
The food at the guesthouse next to mine was just fantastic. The seafood was amazingly fresh as well. In fact one day I was swimming and saw a crab trap right off the beach with 5 live crabs in it. When you order a crab for dinner, the cook walks into the water and grabs a crab for you!
After I left the island, I stopped for a day in Kampot, a sleepy old colonial town known for it's pepper farms around. Kampot pepper is supposed to be the best in the world.
Next stop - Sihanoukville.
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