As Daisy left to return to Vermont and my new friends Molly and Dan (check out their blog veganhop.com about traveling the world vegan style) went to honeymoon on an island on the coast, I found an outdated Lonely Planet Cambodia book on the rack and in under an hour had spontaneously bought a ticket to Kampot for the next morning. My criteria: beach, mountains, and quiet. After a 14 hour bus ride I found myself in a quaint little post-colonial town with crumbling french style buildings and a promenade. I sat next to a French man named Gilles on the bus and we shared a tuk tuk to Ganesha, a seriously beautiful and chilled out guesthouse/bungalow spot out of town on the river, surrounded by rice fields and water buffalo.
The snack options at the bus stop: tarantula or baby chicken?
View from my treehouse window:
The next day Gilles and I borrowed bicycles and braved the super muddy road to town. Kampot was a sort of resort town for the French during their colonization, and was also one of the places longest occupied by the Khmer Rouge. Today you can tell the town is gearing up for tourism but it still retains a very sweet co-existence of french ex-pats and entrepreneurial Khmer (Cambodians). You can have rice porridge or Khmer curry for lunch and then walk down the street to the bakery to pick up baguettes or a brownie.
My breakfast: french baguette with pineapple-cacao jam, Cambodian coffee (yum) and a coconut.
Another day we splurged on a $13 Countryside Tour. Our first stop were some caves where there is an old Hindu temple, and we found out many people died hiding from the Khmer Rouge. Two boys of maybe 12 years peddled wildly to keep up with our tuk tuk and when we got there they introduced themselves as guides, in perfect English. They were soon joined by a local girl who also spoke good French. There was no pushing or asking for money, but of course we gave our guide a couple bucks. I say good on their parents for recognizing that education is the gateway. Perfect English in the middle of the countryside and a sweet nature… Just lovely.
We continued on to a pepper plantation. I had never really thought about how peppercorns are grown and it was interesting to see the plants growing up brick towers, full with unripened green peppercorn bundles. Kampot Pepper is supposedly some of the World’s best pepper but was almost lost during the Khmer Rouge’s reign. Now they have a special heritage label and it is coming back.
We had lunch at the crab market in Kep, Kampot’s neighboring beach town. I had fried crab with green peppercorns, and my Grandpa (who caught crabs in the Chesapeake Bay for decades) would have been proud of how I cleaned them up. Delicious!
Crab monger
Dried shrimp for sale at the market
View from our lunch spot
My favorite part of this day, and probably of my time in Cambodia, was the extraordinarily friendly people. Anyone passing on a motorbike or on foot would stare until I cracked a smile at them, which was always returned with bright, honest smiles back. The entire day we were chased by the small voices of children running outside to wave and shout “HELLOOO.” And the landscape is just breathtaking. I felt that this was the real Cambodia, and I loved it.
Most unexpected ice cream man:
