Kampot, Kep & Rabbit Island
The long weekend began with a four and a half to five hour bus trip down to Phnom Penh. I was really hoping to spend the weekend reading my book, but I was seated next to a lovely K’mai man who decided to give me a language lesson throughout the trip.
I arrived in Phnom Penh to a torrential downpour, so made my way to Street 240 and ‘The Shop’ for a relaxing lunch whilst I waited to hear back from Bek about directions to her house. I had a week’s worth of pent up frustrations (i.e. house hunting!!) that I needed to get off my chest, Meagan – Bek’s housemate let me go on my little rant whilst Bek was busy skyping her husband.
The first order of the day was a mani/pedi, all three of us made our way to tips and toes and we chatted as our nails had some life brought back into them!
We were running a little late to get to Vijay’s place, but quickly realised that we weren’t the only ones, when Jacqui hopped out of her tuk tuk at the same time as us. A quick taste test of Angkor’s Stout was in order while we waited for Guy to arrive, he was the unlucky one that had to work on Friday. We piled into out taxi and spent the two and a half hour trip playing car games to entertain ourselves and take away some of the discomfort of being squished into the back seat of the car. For about two thirds of the trip I had been on the look out for a toilet, in the end we had to request that the driver pull over, in our broken k’mai. I felt so much better, until we drove on a further five minutes and I realised that we had arrived at our destination!
We spent the evening at the Bohdi Tree which we later discovered backs on to the river and then caught a tuk tuk back to Irena’s. A lovely wooden home, on stilts which is located in a semi built up area of town (although when we first arrived, because it was night time and there are no street lights we thought that we were in the middle of nowhere!!).
The next day we went on an adventure. We thought that we were only going to Bokor Hill to see the casino. It was a bit of a surprise when the tour guide started pointing at our thongs and saying “You’re hiking in those?!”. We thought we’d be ok, and we were, but it was a steep and slippery slope and there may or may not have been leeches that decided to attach themselves to us! We got to the top and were then directed to our mini van, it did have brakes but they decided that a plank of wood should be put behind the tyres to ensure its stability as 15 well-built westerners hopped in!
The casino was an amazing site to be seen, it is a ruin that we could wander through as we liked, this included getting lost as we made our way upstairs, through the rabbit warren. We had lunch in the old hospital and the tour guide proceeded to tell us of the plans that the developer has for the area. I’m afraid that next time we visit (not within the next year but ‘next time’) the whole entire hill side will be covered in hotels, houses and who knows what else!
By this time we had been informed of our second surprise of the day – a visit to the local waterfalls and they were beautiful. As we arrived it reminded me slightly of Bell Gorge in the Kimberley region of WA. The water was kind of murky and didn’t look appetizing to swim in but it also wasn’t very hot on the top of mountain.
We were exhausted by this stage, but the tour company had also organised for us to go on a sunset cruise down the river. We made our way on to the boat that was waiting for us, only to find that this was not the right boat, we had to jump on to that one that had just pulled into the mooring instead. We sat on top on the roof, drank beers, ate rambutans, made lack lustre conversation and watched the world go by. We were meant to be out on the water for two hours but reached a unanimous decision at the half an hour mark that we should head for home – we were ravenous! We had been told about this great little pizza place down the street from Irena’s house and we gorged ourselves on pizza. With very full tummy’s we made our way to Irena’s house for a well-earned sleep – or at least we tried to… but we got incredibly lost! We had people giving us various different directions, although we eventually found our way home.
The next day we went to Epic Arts Café for a yummy start to the day. The tuk tuk collected us for our trip into Kep, where we would meet the boat that would take us to Rabbit Island. In Kep there is a limit to the amount of people that can travel in a tuk tuk within the town. This meant that Jacqui, Irena and myself had to wait about half an hour for the driver to drop the others off to the boat and come back to collect us. There were many families out and about, everyone seemed to be on the sea shore enjoying picnics in the lovely, sunny weather.
The boat that collected us looked as though the propeller was made out of whipper snippers. On the way over two fish jumped into our boats – it was hilarious. We arrived on the island and the skipper took us to his friend’s restaurant where we could organise our accommodation for the night. We stayed in these wooden, thatched beach huts that were quite comfortable. They had squat toilets and the showers didn’t work, but we spent a lot of time at the beach but we didn’t have to worry about that. The food on the island was pretty average. The menus looked great but we everything that we asked for wasn’t available. We found these tyre tubes that were available for us to float on and we asked the policeman who was sitting near them if they were for us to use and he said yes. We had a great time floating around and then when we lazily removed ourselves from the water to find that the policeman wanted to charge us $7!! What extortion – he never told us before we used them, nor was there a sign! We walked away saying that we would come back with payment later, with no intention of doing so – we thought he was taking us for a ride and just joking with us! He came searching for payment whilst Vijay, Irena and I were peacefully reading our books and the others were having a massage. He was casually loitering around the massage tables, waiting for them to finish when he spotted us!! Poor Irena had to deal with him and grab some money whilst Vijay and I sat there pretending that we had never seen him before – sorry Irena! We walked in the other direction down the beach later and saw that there was a different place that also had the tyres for hire, they were also charging about $1 per tyre! Oops! The rest of the holiday consisted of Jacqui and I teaching the others to plays Kings and a relaxing morning at the beach before we headed back to Kep.
When we arrived in Kep we had to do the annoying ‘two trips into the town because I cannot carry six people in my tuk tuk’. I was in the second travelling group and by the time we got to the seafood restaurant there was a beautiful assortment of treats to enjoy! The crab and fish dishes were AMAZING!
We then took the trip back to Kampot, had some afternoon tea and said our goodbyes to Irena. We became even more friendly on the way back from Kampot because the car ride was a little squishy!
I can’t wait till our next trip together!!
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