Time sure flies here in Kampot! Not that we’ve been super busy doing stuff.....the time just seems to pass by quickly. Here we are with just two nights left of our five night stay and I haven’t updated the blog and there are still a couple of things on our Kampot ‘to do’ list. Tomorrow will have to be the day as the next morning we leave bright and early for Siam Reap.
As luck would have it we arrived in Kampot right at the time of their water festival. What fun! There were boat races in the river and a boat parade and lots of people in from their tiny villages and loads of stalls set up all along the river and fireworks and well.....it was a festival and we were happy to be here for it. The same festival will be in Phnom Penh the following week and in the past they have had soooo many problems there with too many people and too much “festivities” that it can actually be a dangerous place to be so we are super grateful to not be there for it. In fact, the expats that live there plan to be away during the water festival and if they are staying in town during those dates they bring in all that they’ll need and then plan to not leave their homes during the events!
It was really interesting to watch the masses of people leave the water festival event here the other night....as I mentioned, many of them had come in from surrounding villages to support their teams (paddling races) and when the day was done it was time to head back to the village. So, they just all piled into their boats....old, young, babies and their buggies, the produce and souvenirs they’d purchased during their day here in town....all packed into the boat and off they sailed into the sunset. Well, they didn’t actually sail, there was a motor on the back of their boat. LOL. As well, all the paddling teams just set out up the river paddling their way home, some in celebration and others in defeat but all having plenty of fun along the way. :-)
More luck has come our way in the form of a new friend and travel buddy who is staying at our same hotel. Natalie (from the UK) has been travelling on her own and as she is going in the same direction as we are and as our timelines are similar we’ve all agreed that it is a win/win/win for us to just do it together. As I told her tonight....its way better to have three for a game of cards than two! LOL. It also cuts some of our travel costs down a little. For example, today we took a tuk tuk for the day and instead of having to divide the cost by two....we were able to divide it by three. Yep....win win win. :-). There is also the fact that Natalie was tired of travelling on her own...she was ready to have a little company and we are happy that she’s decided we’re good company. :-)
Yesterday, Natalie and I decided it was time to check out a local spa that had been recommended. Although it was okay....I think Bali has spoiled me as this did not compare to what I grew accustomed to during my time there. By the time my facial was underway I was ready to leave and so while I was still covered in a mask of cucumber I simply said, “finished” and that was it. My therapist got the message and so she finished me up by skipping the final few minutes and let me out of there. Honestly, it was just too hot and there were mosquitoes in my little hut and so I was hot and tired and ready to go as we were already an hour over the time we were supposed to be finished.....and so I did. Natalie too was ready to go and we laughed about the strange massage technique of hanging a blanket over our heads with a pot of aromatherapy below us as we came back to our hotel in our tuk tuk. It’s an okay concept but the problem was that there was no “wonderful” aroma coming from that pot and my blanket had a little fly under it and it was HOT under there! I lasted about 10 minutes before I took the blanket off my head and when my therapist tried to put it back on (she understood very little English) I just said “No, too hot” and took it away from her. I’m pretty sure there is a photo of me on their “don’t let this one back in here” wall! LOL
By night, the three of us have been doing our best to empty the bar here at Mea Culpa. So far we have been unsuccessful but tonight gave it another shot. Their White Russians here are to die for! I’m not sure why.....perhaps it is that they must contain at least 4 ounces of booze in each! Last night we gave the bar here a rest though and just used their glasses instead as another hotel guest had just gifted us with a bottle of white wine and so we managed to work our way through that with our dinner. Yes, Kampot has been a stop filled with delicious drinks for sure! We’ve already got a plan to head to Rikitikitavi tomorrow for their 2 for 1 happy hour....yikes! This is beginning to sound like a problem even to me. :-)
Today was an incredible day! The three of us hired a tuk tuk for the day ($25). Ali (our driver) picked us up here at 9 a.m. with our first stop at the salt fields about 10 minutes away. What hard workers those salt field hands must be! There are so many labour intensive steps in the process of gathering the salt from the sea water and the pay they receive is pittance! In fact, they receive just $2.50 per step in the process per field and each step takes 3-5 days. Each worker might be able to do 2-3 fields at a time. Bottom line...they work HARD...really HARD...in the hot sun....and they get paid almost nothing to do it. The kicker is that 90% of them are women. The men are often off in another city working at their job and as the women stay home to tend to house and kids etc they do jobs like the salt fields “in their spare time”! Gads! I’m sure glad I have other options for my spare time activities!!!
Our next stop was the pepper plantation called La Plantation. It is a French run operation that is very proactive about giving back to the community its located in. Some of the ways they give back is by paying their workers a higher wage, by sponsoring the top three kids of each elementary school in their area to go to high school and potentially to college, and perhaps my favourite of their “gifts” is that they double the wage of the teachers in their local schools. They also do smaller one off things like giving bikes to families who need one and perhaps not so small like being organic and working toward leaving as little footprint as possible with all their business practices. Getting to La Plantation was not as easy as you might think. It was about 40 minutes in the tuk tuk and the road we had to travel was rough. Not just rough....but really really rough! They’ve had a bad rainy season this year and it is not long over and the result is that the roads (none of them are paved) have massive potholes and small rivers running through and across them! Without any exaggeration I can state that by the time we got back to our hotel tonight we all agreed that it is very likely we’ll all feel like we were in a car accident by tomorrow or the next day. My guess is that there will be three people here taking an Advil tonight! But it was all worth it! What a fantastic stop it was! The pepper poles are beautiful and the variety of ways the pepper can be used so interesting. Kampot pepper is considered to be one of, if not the very best pepper in the world! We even tried pepper ice cream..... But our favourite part of the day was when we agreed to do the water buffalo tour. Who’d have thought that we’d be climbing into the back of a little wooden cart that was being pulled through the rice field and mango orchards by two massive black water buffalo when we got up this morning?! Not us....but there we were....doing just that.....and in the end.....LOVING IT! :-). It was another rough ride but somehow it all seemed so right to be there in the middle of nowhere in the silence of nature holding on for dear life in the back of that cart. Our driver was perched out in front sitting on nothing more than the centre board between those two massive creatures. He talked to them the entire time we were with them....and that is not insignificant! You might think we were on there for 20-30 minutes??? Nope.....it was just shy of 2 hours! OMG! We were on there so long we almost began to believe we were farmers! LOL. At the half way point of our water buffalo adventure we reached the lake (which was where we were headed the whole time). The buffalo LOVE the water. They pulled our little cart right into the lake with them and before we knew it, they’d both submerged completely! We weren’t sure what would happen to us but I guess the plantation has done this before and so we only got wet up to our mid calf. Our driver had warned us ahead of time so we already had shoes off and were prepared but still surprised none the less. Those buffalo were soooo happy to be in that water. The driver got off and walked (waist deep) around the buffalo to wash them off and splash them and just generally play in the water with them. He extended the invitation to us to join in the fun but we all agreed that we’d rather keep our wet bits limited to our lower legs only! The ride back to the plantation was the same path we’d taken on the way to the lake and so the familiarity added to our sense of belonging. There were kids playing along the trail, there were orchards and sugar cane and rice fields and coconut palms. There were flowers and cattle (the skinniest cattle I’ve ever seen!) and dogs and workers. There was blue sky and there was silence....the kind of silence that only happens when you’re in nature and feeling very very present in the moment. Perhaps we were so present in the moment as we had to hold on for dear life every so often or perhaps we were so present in the moment as there was no where else that made sense for us to be. Regardless....it was a great day!
From the plantation we headed for Kep (ocean side) where we enjoyed a meal of crab. Crab with garlic, crab with green peppercorns, and crab salad rolls. Well, Lynda and I enjoyed the crab. Natalie is a vegetarian so she opted for a veggie dish and passed on the crab that Kep is famous for.
By the time we got back to Mea Culpa tonight we were all done for but heh...there was a table calling us in the bar and we had some planning to do for the next leg of our journey as we only have two more sleeps here in Kampot. So that’s what we did...we got to business and made some plans. Yep, as crazy as it may sound....we’ll be taking a taxi from Kampot to Siam Reap....oh ya....that’s about a 10 hour drive! LOL. Oh the adventures we have. :-)
Till next time,
LorLyn
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