18th - 21st October 2011
It was scorching hot when we arrived in dusty, pretty little Kampot, home to some seriously wonderful black pepper. Ignoring the salivating touts who crowded round the bus we struck out on foot taking a little longer than we should have to get to our hotel of choice; Blissful. An apt name for this place, despite our heatcatching room, they gave us tokens for two free beers on arrival. Err, hello Heaven!
We ate lunch (red beef curry and an omelette with a baguette and... REAL BUTTER!), kicked back and relaxed all afternoon, I didn't do my headache any favours by reading a book, Eat, Pray, Love (both Djalma and I have now finished it and agree it was a very good book despite it being a short stones throw away from chick-lit) while Djalma slept.
Evening came around, the air so much cooler even more so when we left our room, the relative chill of the evening air was almost a shock to the system, but a welcome one nevertheless. We had another meal at our Blissful hotel, the food was quite expensive when compared with our usual dollar budget for each meal, but the meals were superb and came out in huge portions so we didn't feel cheated at all, the best thing was the pepper dip/sauce; fresh crushed kampot black pepper with a little vinegar or lemon juice, it was incredibly aromatic but not too spicy and went with everything.
After a little walk around the wide streets in town we headed back to our room and went to sleep.
The next day we were up fairly early to organise ourselves for a little daytrip to Bokor National Park, the reason for visiting Kampot in the first place. While I got things and myself ready, Djalma went out and sorted a little scooter and brought back some Khmer sandwiches (the baguettes with salad, mystery meats and a little chilli sauce) which were considerably cheaper than the food that we'd been eating at our hotel (value for money or not). We strapped on some headgear, I don't think I could call them helmets, that had been designed with something other than cranial safety in mind. Djalma's had a sporty design but left most of the forehead and ears exposed and mine came equipped with some sorry looking sparkles, a big bow and a visor which kept on connecting with the back of Djalma's head.
I still wasn't quite over the minor trauma of our little accident on day three of 'The Loop' in central Laos, so when our bike started doing minor fishtails, due to the wind, I was all ready to turn round and go back. In mind of keeping this as accurate and unbiased as possible I would like to mention that it was only my fevered imagination that noted the wobbliness of the bike, Djalma didn't feel it at all (in fact nearly every bike we've been on has felt rather unstable but that's more to do with the fact that the wheels on scooters seem paper thin not because they actually were).
The park entrance was about 7km outside of town and we paid our five dollar entrance fees and started the up the winding road to the abandoned hill station.
A word about Bokor hill station, the road leading up to it was still being tarmacked and finished when we visited, before it was so bad that getting there under your own steam wasn't allowed or recommended and you had to join either an expensive Jeep tour or an expensive hiking tour - we were lucky that most of the road was finished and in excellent condition (it was so new that the road signs still had plastic wrappers on), some of it was a little muddy but still passable. The original road was built by slave labour to accomodate the French's wish for a holiday resort in the cool air at the top of the mountain, many of these labourers died building the road. The resort opened in the early 1920s but the French had less than twenty years to enjoy it before Vietnam's fight for independance under the French had them out on their derrieres. After that it was abandoned again as the Khmer Rouge crept in the surrounding countryside (around 1972) and it has been uninhabited ever since. The few buildings that remain left to the elements and some particularly bright orange lichen - I'll be honest if something is bright orange and occurs naturally I get all excited and it was the lichen that called me to this spot, not the spectacular views from the summit.
We stopped a few times to take photos on the way up but the best views were from the top. There was one ledge which faced the sea and the salt farms, the ground dropping away immediately below for a good kilometre. The wind was cool and the views were spectacular, we spent a while sitting and looking over the edge and taking photos of each other.
Back on our bike we continued a little further on to Bokor Palace, an old hotel, which was surrounded by scaffolding and off limits to intrepid explorers such as ourselves.
A point of note - the palace features in the final scenes of Mat Dillon's 'City of Ghosts' set in Cambodia/USA - of course we downloaded and watched it - the film was okay but mainly it's just nice to see a place you've been to, on the silver screen (or our notebook screen). We wandered further on leaving the palace behind and came to some smaller buildings also covered in the orange lichen, it was surreal to say the least.
After an unsuccesful search for lunch we continued up the road and past a small Wat where three monks in their orange gear were plantng aloe vera.
The views out from the edge weren't as good but the Wat and it's pink street lights, minus the lights, were pretty. We continued round the National Park to get to some rapids/waterfalls, passing through a very muddy spot on the way. I got off and walked.
We arrived at a small spot, got direction from a friendly dude who was supervising some construction work on the road and walked through long grasses and over squelchy moss to get to the falls.
They were beautiful, a wall of rocks with the water running between and under to create more than one spout of water.
We climbed over the rocks, Djalma climbed down to be closer to the action and I sat and waited while he ventured further down to look at the last waterfall.
Djalma's insatiable apetite for waterfalls satiated for now, we walked back and headed for home.
The drive back down the mountain was wonderful, we went slowly - I'm too much of a girl to enjoy going anywhere fast on a scooter - and enjoyed the breeze and more of the beautiful, beautiful views out to sea and, a little further on, Vietnam.
Back at our hotel, we cashed in our beer tokens and enjoyed a couple of cool ones with a burger and a traditional lok lak (if that's how you spell it) a meat dish with just lots of meat, accompanied of course by some black pepper.
The next day we got up at a very leisurely 8am had omelettes and baguettes (with HP sauce)for breakfast along with a cup of Earl Grey from my little stash of tea bags. We arranged a couple of bus tickets to the boat point for Rabbit Island and sat and waited, reading in the shade, for our pickup to the station (a three minute walk but we had a free tuk tuk ride so we took it). An hour or so later we were by the small pier and stocking up on rations. Along with a boat ticket we bought a litre of Bacardi Oro and 20 litres of water, the essentials for island living.
We shared the boat with three girl marines, an odd trio to be sure and arrived on little Rabbit Island half an hour later.
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