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Published: March 3rd 2016
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It's a hard life, backpacking - we headed back to the beach to relax. A quick stop in the hellhole that is Sihanoukville (fortunately not overnight - bleargh) and then we were on a boat to the island of Koh Rong Samloem. It was pretty idyllic there; we were staying in a little fishing village and the entire place was built on the beach - we never even had to put flip flops on the whole time we were there, just wandered around barefoot, sunk a few beer and lay on the beach. The peace was only shattered on one night when a local wedding was held on the beach and blared 90s techno at deafening volumes until 2 am - lovely!
The main reason for going to the island was for some more scuba diving. We went with a company who turned out to be immensely disorganised - we sat on the beach for hours while they told us 'we'll know when we're setting off in 10 minutes or so' every now and again, before they suddenly arrived fully kitted up and said 'are you ready to go then?' (An early lesson in 'Cambodian time'). Once we eventually got
going though it was decent diving; we saw some good stuff, tuna and some other big guys. Our dive guide was an ex-Navy bloke who was a very experienced diver but had only started diving for non-military purposes a year or two ago, and perhaps as a consequence of that was extremely hands on with the sea life... We felt pretty terrible for the poor critters, as he scooped up seahorses to drop into our hands, scraped sea cucumbers to get them to throw their own guts up (a defence mechanism which doesn't damage them, but still...), flicked stingrays tails to get them to zoom off from their hiding places, and worst of all repeatedly poked at an octopus causing it to ink for all it was worth. Hard to say 'leave the poor little buggers alone!' while underwater, so we just had to go along with it... He also found an octopus hiding in an anemone at one point and tried his best to get it to come out of hiding, while its tentacles writhed around frantically. Fortunately he didn't manage to, as he later told us he couldn't remember the species name, but that it was uber-poisonous -
maybe best left alone then, mate!
From Koh Rong Samloem it was off to Kampot, home of the famous kampot pepper. One of the most delicious Cambodian dishes consists simply of some meat or seafood cooked very plainly and then served with numerous stalks of fresh kampot pepper, from which you take a peppercorn or two every few bites. The pepper is so tasty that it's really all you need to make a wonderful meal. Fortunately we'd had plenty of kampot pepper before arriving in Kampot itself, as that's where I came down with the same tropical lurgy that Tania had in Battambang, so I spent my time there lying in bed rather than tasting any delicious foods...
Luckily I recovered in time for our next stop, Kep, just down the coast. Kep is famous for its crab, and rightfully so - it was amazing. You head down to the shore, and the sea is full of fishermen bringing in basket after basket of freshly caught crab. You just go up to one of the ladies sat with the baskets, haggle for a huge mound of crab (for a tiny cost) then stick your hands in the basket
and pull out the biggest, juiciest ones you can find. Then you take them over to the other end of the boardwalk and pay someone a few pennies, they bop all your crabs over the head and drop them straight into a pan, where they get quickly steamed in seawater. Then you buy a beer from one of the stalls on the beach, sit down and get cracking! Definitively fresh, salty and truly delicious, the best crab I've ever had. I don't think I'm too much of a slouch when it comes to getting into a crab, but I evidently wasn't up to Cambodian standards - half way through my first crab the lady we bought the beer from took pity on me and came over, laughing to her friends, and proceeded to demolish the entire pile for me in a matter of seconds, leaving me to just pick the meat out. The whole experience was awesome - if every meal was as fun and delicious as that, I'd be a serious fatty, because I'd never stop eating...
Final stop in Cambodia was Kratie, home of the elusive Mekong river dolphin, one of the worlds rarest creatures - there
are thought to be less than 100 left. We had a lovely day there, renting bicycles and cycling up through 15 km of pure rural Cambodia, in the kind of scenery you feel hasn't changed in hundreds of years - pigs, chickens and bamboo huts lining a dirt road running between rice paddies and gently waving palm trees (although admittedly there were probably fewer Man Utd shirts in previous centuries...) Once we arrived, we had a great boat trip out on the ultra-scenic Mekong, and saw loads of dolphins to top it all off. Unfortunately, it turns out that river dolphins are kind of boring compared to sea dolphins - they don't play, they're not curious, they just kinda swim around. Still great to see though!
We'll definitely take fond memories of Cambodia away with us; the stunning temples of Angkor, the food, and the lovely people, especially the super cute kids - you can't pass a house in Cambodia without all the kids sprinting up to the front gate and shouting 'Hello!' at you as you walk by. We'll probably miss a little less the low level corruption, the 'Cambodian time' that means even the shortest journeys last
hours and hours, and the near constant illness we had in the country... Next stop Laos!
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