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Cool in Kep (Mon 25 Feb 2008)
Kep is little more than I had seen as I got off the bus – a dusty town square with a roundabout and the sea to one side. There are 2 hotels in the town, and a couple a bit of a way further down the seafront where mine is. Lining the seaside are colourful deckchairs – these are the restaurants apparently – you sit on a chair and they bring the restaurant to you – mainly crabs that are cooked any way you want, but no trade, all the little seats were empty. But I too resist those for the moment in my search for the internet. I find the only one internet terminal in the whole of Kep in the recently opened Star Inn, so patiently wait my turn to catch up on the very slow and consistently dropping Hotmail – so communication this week will be a little lacking, and all blog uploads will have to wait a few days. The local guidebook says that Sihanoukville, my next stop some 160kms away is like Thailand was 20 years ago – so not sure where that places Kep in the timeline of civilisation. But it’s nice to find a place so laid back. The only thing I can find for sale is the ubiquitous seafood, there aren’t even any little stalls selling t shirts, clothes or even tacky souvenirs. You can do a trip to Rabbit Island about half an hour away by local boat, but two things, my dislike of rough looking boats small boats in open sea and the fact that according to the Peace Corps guy, there is some malaria there, I decide against it. The town is littered with the ruins of the villas that were here in the town’s heyday in the 50’s when it was the place favoured by the glitterati of the time, before the Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge troubles started. They are everywhere, just ruins with gaping walls and overgrown with tropical foliage, still with the bullet holes evident. Some have been squatted in by locals, but most just left…. The King apparently still has a villa here, just out of town. The signs of development are here, a couple of them are being rebuilt, and one in the town – the Villa - is due to open next January, and looks like it will be a beautiful hotel, very stylish. This hotel, the Champey Inn is really pretty, with lots of tropical flowers particularly the ever present and fragrant frangipani, and as the Cambodian word for frangipani is “champey” it now makes sense. There are also a few animals – a dog that has just given birth to six puppies of indeterminate pedigree is proudly exhibited to me – they live in the garden just outside my room. And there is a white rabbit that runs around – perhaps I am Alice in Wonderland and not in Kep at all! There are generally a lot of dogs in the area, and in the late evening they all seem to howl together – perhaps they are really the Hounds of the Baskervilles. The hotel looks out over the big bay where all the fishing boats, bright turquoise and reminiscent of the long tail boats in Thailand, wait during the day. At the hotel I meet a great Dutch couple, Honika and Rudolph and during the rainy afternoon (not supposed to happen as this is the dry season) we share a bottle of not bad wine. They are a brother and sister travelling together for 5 weeks – he works in the Dutch Prison service and she in a psychiatric hospital. They are good fun with perfect English and we while away the afternoon. They have a great sense of humour and I really enjoy their travel tales of Laos and Cambodia. They were here last year and realised there was so much more to see so have come back again now – I understand exactly what they mean, and I will come back too. I join them for dinner at the seafood market just across the road where there must be ten shack type restaurants built on stilts over the sea, each looking grubbier than the last. They had already eaten in the first one and it was good so we patronise it again. Every type of seafood is on offer, and I try the crab and some of the huge prawns. I am writing this next day, so I survived the experience! The lighting in the restaurant is dim and you look out into the inky blackness where there are just one or two single lamps from the fishing boats in the far distance. The dark is really dark here, and the very short walk of about 100 metres is quite hard to see anything. But this dark, without the light pollution from any city has its benefits – the stars are amazing. In the Northern hemisphere I have never seen anything like them – the whole sky is littered like so many bright, sparkly diamonds.
Kep is little more than I had seen as I got off the bus – a dusty town square with a roundabout and the sea to one side. There are 2 hotels in the town, and a couple a bit of a way further down the seafront where mine is. Lining the seaside are colourful deckchairs – these are the restaurants apparently – you sit on a chair and they bring the restaurant to you – mainly crabs that are cooked any way you want, but no trade, all the little seats were empty. But I too resist those for the moment in my search for the internet. I find the only one internet terminal in the whole of Kep in the recently opened Star Inn, so patiently wait my turn to catch up on the very slow and consistently dropping Hotmail – so communication this week will be a little lacking, and all blog uploads will have to wait a few days. The local guidebook says that Sihanoukville, my next stop some 160kms away is like Thailand was 20 years ago – so not sure where that places Kep in the timeline of civilisation. But it’s nice to find a place so laid back. The only thing I can find for sale is the ubiquitous seafood, there aren’t even any little stalls selling t shirts, clothes or even tacky souvenirs. You can do a trip to Rabbit Island about half an hour away by local boat, but two things, my dislike of rough looking boats small boats in open sea and the fact that according to the Peace Corps guy, there is some malaria there, I decide against it. The town is littered with the ruins of the villas that were here in the town’s heyday in the 50’s when it was the place favoured by the glitterati of the time, before the Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge troubles started. They are everywhere, just ruins with gaping walls and overgrown with tropical foliage, still with the bullet holes evident. Some have been squatted in by locals, but most just left…. The King apparently still has a villa here, just out of town. The signs of development are here, a couple of them are being rebuilt, and one in the town – the Villa - is due to open next January, and looks like it will be a beautiful hotel, very stylish. This hotel, the Champey Inn is really pretty, with lots of tropical flowers particularly the ever present and fragrant frangipani, and as the Cambodian word for frangipani is “champey” it now makes sense. There are also a few animals – a dog that has just given birth to six puppies of indeterminate pedigree is proudly exhibited to me – they live in the garden just outside my room. And there is a white rabbit that runs around – perhaps I am Alice in Wonderland and not in Kep at all! There are generally a lot of dogs in the area, and in the late evening they all seem to howl together – perhaps they are really the Hounds of the Baskervilles. The hotel looks out over the big bay where all the fishing boats, bright turquoise and reminiscent of the long tail boats in Thailand, wait during the day. At the hotel I meet a great Dutch couple, Honika and Rudolph and during the rainy afternoon (not supposed to happen as this is the dry season) we share a bottle of not bad wine. They are a brother and sister travelling together for 5 weeks – he works in the Dutch Prison service and she in a psychiatric hospital. They are good fun with perfect English and we while away the afternoon. They have a great sense of humour and I really enjoy their travel tales of Laos and Cambodia. They were here last year and realised there was so much more to see so have come back again now – I understand exactly what they mean, and I will come back too. I join them for dinner at the seafood market just across the road where there must be ten shack type restaurants built on stilts over the sea, each looking grubbier than the last. They had already eaten in the first one and it was good so we patronise it again. Every type of seafood is on offer, and I try the crab and some of the huge prawns. I am writing this next day, so I survived the experience! The lighting in the restaurant is dim and you look out into the inky blackness where there are just one or two single lamps from the fishing boats in the far distance. The dark is really dark here, and the very short walk of about 100 metres is quite hard to see anything. But this dark, without the light pollution from any city has its benefits – the stars are amazing. In the Northern hemisphere I have never seen anything like them – the whole sky is littered like so many bright, sparkly diamonds.
