What a long day - 11 1/2 hours of travelling with frequent stops. Fortunately, our driver decided to take a longer route back to Phnom Penh. It made the day much longer but we avoided most of the bone rattling roads. Our first stop was Kep. It’s a lovely, small town on the coast. There isn’t an enormous beach, which is the situation in Sihanoukville but thankfully the hoardes of Mainland Chinese tourists haven’t found it yet. It’s got a tragic history. During the Pol Pot years, people destroyed any documents they had to prove they owned property; if the Khmer Rouge found out you were a landowner you were killed. In the French colonial days, Kep was a favourite place for the upper classes in Cambodian society. They built villas and stately homes in the area. During the war Kep was constantly bombed and so most of the homes were destroyed. Many of the people who owned the properties also died and so, when the fighting ended, there was nobody left to claim the homes. If family members were alive, they had no documents to prove they owned anything and people didn’t have specific information as to where their properties were. Because of this, Kep has a lot of ‘jungle’ areas scattered among the new developments that show where homes used to be in the good old days.
I knew, if we were going to Kep, our first stop would be the market. It’s famous for seafood and especially shrimp and crab. In the West, I don’t think we’d even be buying these crabs as they are quite small. The crabs are brought ashore by fishermen and then the women take over. They sort the crabs, which all have elastic bands holding their claws, into wicker baskets that are kept in the sea. When prospective buyers come along the ladies go into the water to retrieve the baskets and then the bargaining goes on on land. Once the crabs and shrimps have been purchased, they move to another section where ladies cook them. Loaded down with bags of crab and shrimp we then set off for an area where we can rent a space on a wooden platform with a grass roof. I always head for the hammocks. The food is spread on the floor and we all tuck in. I don’t have any patience with the shrimp and crab but I did enjoy a squid-like thing that had been cooked with green, immature peppercorns. The Khmer merrily munched on the peppercorns but one was enough for me.
During the day we also visited a couple of spots along the river where there were local people enjoying the water, riding in boats shaped like swans with foot pedals to propel them. There was a place with a tree top adventure set-up where people could climb up and down trees and end up sailing across the river on a wire. These places are not well advertised and so I saw very few foreigners. We also stopped at an organic pepper farm. It is owned by a Khmer man but the manager is from the UK. He had a strong Australian accent so I asked which part he came from. He corrected me and said he came from the island of Guernsey in the UK. I was amazed as he sounded so Australian - he said he’d been with Australians for quite a while and so had picked up their accent. Until I came to Cambodia, for me pepper was pepper. Most of my life it was always in the powder form but nowadays I do know about pepper grinders. In Cambodia pepper is gourmet and world famous - it’s also expensive too. They had black, red and white pepper on sale. Each is for a specific kind of cooking - meat, fish etc. I purchased some white pepper which is the rarest as it is the most mature of the peppercorns, with the ‘skin’ removed. It always makes a great gift when I’m moving around.
We also stopped at one of my favourite places but we didn’t go in because we had small children who wanted to sleep. It’s a mountain that is entered via a tunnel. Once inside the mountain you enter an arena that is open to the sky. Many years ago the top of the mountain collapsed and now this arena has a large open space with trees growing on the sides. It’s a fascinating place and I’m glad I’ve been there before otherwise I’d have been disappointed.
Once it got dark at around 5.30pm I have no interest in being in the bus and so I tried to switch off and nod off. Meanwhile the others on the bus are either eating or busy working on their computers sorting out flight bookings for customers. If they weren’t on their computers they were on their phones talking to clients. I felt sorry for them because they never have a holiday away from their computers. On the other hand, they are young and single, and they get bonuses on top of their salaries depending on the amount of business the company does each month.
The boys wanted to come over for the night but I told them I’d had them for three days and it was my turn to have a bit of peace and quiet. Thus ended a lovely weekend experience.
