Kampot pepper and Kep crabs

When the Chinese started to overrun Sihanoukville the local expat scene moved on to Kampot. A little French colonial town which is famous for its pepper. Cambodia tries to get the old town recognized as World Heritage site together with Kratie and Battambang. 

First we drove out of town again to visit Bokor Hill Station, a colonial French built resort to flee the heat of the region. Nowadays only the church remains and some newer hotels and casinos have been built. The surrounding land is in progress to be heavily developed with huge plots of land being cleared.

The church

The Mushroom, one of the attractions 🤷‍♂️😁

Creepy hotel with all its shutters closed

Ugly hotel/casino yay

Failed developments but new ones starting right next door 🤷‍♂️

In the evening we strolled through old town and ended up in a little stall by the town square. Here some spaced out Japanese dude was serving beer and telling stories. He used to have a beach bar in Sihanoukville for many years before being driven away. During the summer he returns to Japan and runs a surf bar on the beach. We returned the second night which he was super happy about 😆 The moment I told him I have been to Japan and Korea he took out his secret stash of Soju some friends had brought him 😋

Jamming away 😛

The next day I had to look for a mechanic as the shitty road coming from Sihanoukville had destroyed my front shocks 😔 This was so far the worst part we have been driving in almost two months. I rather drive the Laotian dirt roads than this mess of broken concrete. 😵‍💫 To get around I rented the cheapest scooter available, in hindsight maybe not the smartest choice…

So we visited one of the pepper farms even though I’m not a huge fan of pepper 😅 They showed us the different steps of production including a tasting at the end. Was interesting but couldn’t convince me 😉

Pepper vines

Didn’t know about the long pepper

Traditional meeting house where we had the tasting 

Next was the crab market of Kep. Famous for its Blue Swimmer crab which you can buy by the kilo and have fried right there. So we bought 1kg of crab and 1/2kg of giant shrimp, paid a lady some Riel to fry them, then seated ourselves at one of the little drink stalls and went to work 🙃

Happy crab?

Fresh crab!

Close up

Getting cut in half 😬

Stir fried with some spices

Took us about an hour to eat them 😆

On the way home disaster struck, my drive belt totally disintegrated… luckily there isn’t a mechanic far away and some minutes later I was up and running again. Even though the clutch and rest needed urgent attention as well… 

But then the rental guy insisted we should have called them and refused to pay 🤬 So I got my belt back and gave it away to the guy who fixed my shocks instead. So do not rent from Sean Ly in Kampot, his bikes are in shit condition 👎

My bike was back on track and we continued on to Vietnam!

Khmer New Year on Koh Rong Sanleum

Our was hotel was situated on the southern end of Saracen bay and they explicitly told us which ferry to take. Once we arrived at the port we got ushered into a huge hall for parking and then led to the ticket corner. Ticket in hand waiting for the boat we realized it was the wrong ferry 🤣 Right island, wrong pier 🤷‍♂️ As we weren’t the only guests making that mistake the hotel sent a little boat to pick us all up 😬

The view

Aaron and I went diving, first dive had miserable visibility but the second was great. Even had some current which allowed us to enjoy the many fish without having to do much work. Sadly there weren’t many big fish, the instructor told us they do not respect size requirements when fishing and just take out whatever they can… 🙄

But the best part was that we shaved our mustaches so the mask wouldn’t leak. I present you:

Amish Aaron 🤣

Highlight (at least for the locals) was obviously Khmer New Year! There were water and baby powder battles. 

As well some silly games where you had to smash some pots blindfolded.

Another day we spent at the pool, not doing much 😎

And played more pool.

And totally slept through some major storm hitting the island 😆 Our neighbors got completely soaked in their little cabin and took shelter in the hotel lobby. We only had a small puddle of water, nothing more.

A tree almost hit another bungalow and heaps of boats stranded. The storm wasn’t announced together with the aftermath of the new year festivities almost nobody was prepared to drive the boats further out to ride out the storm.

The yellow boat was our dive boat 😮

Setting them upright and waiting for the tide

Some help from the nearby construction site

We had planned to visit one of the many beaches, but we were too lazy to walk 30min to Lazy Beach 🤣

After four nights it was time to say goodbye and head back to the mainland. We stayed another night at the Blue Lagoon in Sihanoukville before heading to Kampot.

In the shadow of abandoned developments 

To Sihanoukville by way of Phnom Pen

To split the long drive from Battambang to Sihanoukville into two (still long) rides we stopped once more in Phnom Pen for two days. 

Yes that is a little motorbike pulling it 

In Phnom Penh we stumbled into the early Khmer new year party of the hotel staff. As they have to work during the holiday weekend they celebrated together before. It was great fun even though we didn’t understand everything. 

All the staff

Besides dancing in circles there was also some baby powder battles and then a price game were Aaron and I acted as Lady Luck. At 9pm everything was over, still some of the employees looked a bit hung over the next day 😄

Aaron pulling the next name, main price was a rice cooker 😆

Otherwise we went shopping, first to a posh mall where they were selling the fancy brands which you can buy fakes on every corner 🤔

Second was the Central Market, a huge art deco dome form the 30s built by the French.

Mostly jewelry in the center, the outer shops sell the usual stuff as every market we have been to 😆

Didn’t do much else, chilled at the pool and relaxed from the long drive and prepared for the next one.

Wat and shacks slowly getting swallowed up by the high rises 

We used the stairs and even hit the gym!

All the way to Sihanoukville the Chinese built a fancy new express way, but just as in Laos we weren’t allowed to use it 😔 I bet we would be faster than most of the cars…

So this meant taking the shitty road (at least the first 70km) with all the lorries kicking up huge dust clouds.

You can tell which part was covered by the helmet

Luckily the remaining 250km improved and again had the usual shoulder lane which all the motorbikes use. This allows for easy overtaking 😬

Sihanoukville itself is a shit hole, overrun by Chinese who come here for gambling in huge and ugly casinos. 

Lovely

The only reason to stop (or better pass through) are the islands of Koh Rong and Koh Rong Sanloem, where we are headed! 🏝️

After changing accommodation (don’t ask) we ended up in the lovely Blue Lagoon. A little green oasis in the shadow of the concrete high rises. 

On our way back from the ATM (none on the islands!) we couldn’t resist and entered one of the smaller casinos. We each „invested“ 10$ to gamble at the weird Chinese card game. Was a bit like Black Jack but you would get 5 cards at once and win or loose. After an hour playing we still couldn’t figure out how it worked 🤣 As we weren’t allowed to use our phones we couldn’t google it (also no taking pictures), nobody spoke English (besides „very good“ and „bad“) and all the signs were in Chinese 😂

Some googling later we learned that it must have been Niu Niu / Bull Bull 🤷‍♂️

Next island life and Khmer New Year 🎉 

Battambang

As we didn’t want to drive back the same way to Phnom Pen and with ample time left we decided to stop in Battambang (pronounced Battam-bong, important! 😄) for two nights. 

It was “only” 160km from Siem Reap but super hot and we had a slight hang over from Aaron’s birthday 🤪 As it was still his birthday we had to celebrate (again) 🥳😂

But first we went to the Phare circus 🎪 one of the few attractions in this town. They have a school and some form of campus for children to lern the arts. Originally started in a refugee camp on the border to Thailand it moved since here to improve the life of children and young adults. They also got a Guiness Book record for the longest show of 24h 🤷‍♂️

This night it was cabarets and the youngest of the trope were showing off their skills.

Art Installation 

Painted on canvas bags

The two clowns leading through the evening 

Weird dancing

Kids flexing

Impressive skills

The kids did a great job, the clown sketches weren’t really to my taste but the many children in the audience seemed to like them 😄

Afterwards we had some beers next to a chili 🌶️ (seed) eating parrot which would become loud if you didn’t give him a new one 😆

And some fancy cocktails in the nice Miss Wong

To celebrate we splurged on our hotel by choosing one of the pricier ones. We found it weird that they had a picture of a woman as the first one on Booking until we arrived there and realized that Angelina Jolie (and Brad Pitt, but nobody ever mentions him 😂) seemed to have stayed here and it was the managers posing with her 🤷‍♂️😂 Anyway it was a nice little oasis until the second night when right next door a marriage party made our windows shake with their loudspeakers 😄

One of the main attractions is the so called bamboo train. Where they came up with idea to use the derelict rail road tracks by strapping a little engine to some bamboo frame resting on some axles and riding up an down. Of course we had to try that 😀

Assembly

Cruising

As a clutch our driver just pushed the motor more or less forward and to drive back he just turned the engine around 😆 Genius!

He asked if we want to go slow or fast, obviously fast 😉 But boy it rattles and sways quite a bit at 30kmh 😅

Another main attraction is the bat cave of Phnom Sampov, south-west of town. Here ever sunset approximately 6.5 millions of Wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bats emerge to go hunting for food. They help greatly reducing pests and are said to save the rice harvest. Street sellers have setup chairs and tables, sell snacks and drinks to pass the time waiting.

Some rice snack

It goes on and on

Closer look

Tourists 

Buddha not made of concrete!

We left after 20 minutes and they were still emerging! Right around the corner is the so called Killing Cave where the Pol Pot regime tortured and, you guessed it, killed people. Having had enough of death we skipped that as well the hike (or drive) to the top as there wasn’t much view anyway in the hazy conditions.

And that was it with Battambang, next to the coast by way of Phnom Pen!