After two days of hanging about with my great Dutch friends, today I am Gilly no mates as they have gone back to Phnom Penh for a few days to shop before going home and back to work. So today , having had enough of “City” life – yes Kep is known as Kep City, but it can’t have more than 1000 inhabitants excluding the ten tourists I have counted (I was in the only occupied room in the hotel last night), I take a tuk tuk to the really big city, Kampot, some 25kms away. It’s an interesting drive, I learnt early on how to brace myself against the seat to stop from being hurled out at every pothole – and why was it that the driver had a crash helmet on, but I was left to my own fate… The tuk tuks here in Cambodia are different from those in Thailand. They are based on the caravan principle – but the towing vehicle is a motorbike and the trailer where you sit is either a two or four seater, two wheeled affair, quite open and generally very gaudily decorated; today I was in pink and red with a fetching gold trim …. But my favourites are the lorry version, a large trailer with two wheels but again being pulled only by a motorbike. There were loads on the road today carrying rice, wood or people – one I saw had at least 30 people hanging on. I also saw my record so far for the most people on a motorbike – there were six – five adults and one child without a crash helmet between them – perhaps they take up too much space. Another record for the oddest load was the motorbike with a tower of about twenty huge trays of eggs tied onto the back passenger seat whizzing along, overtaking my tuk tuk. The road to Kampot, which is slightly inland, is through the flat coastal plain with some densely wooded hills in the distance, the Elephant Mountains. The scenery is pure rural agriculture – but on a seemingly individual scale. Rice paddies surrounding small stilted houses, huge, fat, wobbly pink and black pigs rooting around in the rubbish and mud, and the thinnest cows I have ever seen tethered at each plot. Don’t know if it’s something to do with the dry season, but they were like slowly walking skeletons, with ribs and shoulder bones poking out. The simple wooden structures, each with a dug out, muddy, dank pool in front (not the swimming variety…) with children, ducks and chickens scampering about looked positively medieval. And every so often a shop, proudly displaying a small selection of dusty 1 litre 7 Up or Coke drinks – but then I realised these were the service stations (see pic) – selling tuk tuk fuel by the litre in these recycled drink bottles. The fashions along the way were interesting too – the outskirts of Kampot are a bit of a backwater area, with brown muddy streams and small boats, rather like a small fishing village as well as a building that looked like a mosque. A lot of the women here and in Kampot had their heads covered in the Islamic tradition. There were also more of the Khmer red and white checked scarves in use, but thankfully not partnered with the black pyjamas that were the uniform of the Khmer Rouge. But there are still big advertising posters with pictures (I guess literacy is generally low here) exhorting people to hand in their pistols, Kalashnikov rifles and hand grenades – must remember to do that soon. A few schools on the way with beautifully turned out kids on their bikes making their way – how on earth their shirts can be so white is beyond me – the water coming out of the tap is brown. I thought my Factor 20 was failing me and I was getting a tan, but realise it’s probably just the water leaving me that colour. Or it may be ineffective showering – the water pressure is not the power shower variety, and you either get scalded or have a cold one. As we neared Kampot, there was a big salt processing plant, and this together with the apparently famous Kampot peppers are an important part of the economy. I had eaten the peppers a couple of nights ago in the form of fried pepper crab, and unlike the black corns we are used to, these are often green, and fried together with the crab whilst still on their stalks – very peppery as you would imagine, but delicious, especially washed down with a glass of cold white wine, overlooking the sea at dusk… As we arrive in Kampot, shaken if not stirred, there is the largest elephant I have ever seen (bigger even than those at the Amber fort in India). It was huge. Not sure if it’s the time of year, but this one looked as anxious as the one I had seen in Phnom Penh, swaying a lot, but also with what appears to be tears streaming from its eyes. It looked like it was in “must”, and frankly, that’s a rather dangerous thing in an animal that large in the middle of a town. So I was relieved when we safely passed it… I was delivered to the internet shop – a necessity as the single internet terminal in Kep had broken – the keyboard was kaput, and not something they have a spare of, so all of a sudden, Kep was off the information superhighway. Kampot is a charming riverside town, full of run down and crumbling old French buildings that somehow escaped the destruction of the long war years. It’s a very quiet place, just a few dusty streets, and the pace of life (even though there’s a bit more of it) is every bit as slow as in Kep. The slow river meanders through, with no moving river traffic, and the mountains rise up on the other side, very restful. Two bridges span the river, one a rather old looking rusty one reminiscent in design of Sydney Harbour or the Tyne bridges on a much smaller scale, and one rather new modern one. I make my way to the market, and that was an experience in itself. Not another Western face to be seen. The big markets of Phnom Penh look like Harrods in comparison, and the overnight rain did little for the conditions underfoot which were like a muddy river. I walked through, using the rubbish as stepping stones, and discovered that, like Harrods, it appeared that you could buy anything. Food, live fish, fishing nets, hammocks, machetes, clothes, shoes, medicines, toiletries, pots, pans and colanders as well as the hair salons (again I wimp out and decide to wait till I find Toni & Guy!). Am also glad to see that P&G are doing their thing with Pert, Head and Shoulders and Pantene featuring largely, albeit in little sachets and not the huge bottles we are used to. But they haven’t quite got the hang of fakes yet, the bags were proudly displayed with the “Nyke” label. There were also some things in the food section that I couldn’t identify, but my questions went unanswered, unlike Kep where there are a few tourists, so there’s enough English about that, together with a few hand signals, you can get by. This was different. Any questions where met with blank stares, my fault as I know only one word of Khmer. The only one thing I found you couldn’t buy (and have not yet found it in Cambodia) is Diet Coke, or indeed Diet drinks of any kind. But I guess if your main preoccupation is getting enough calories in one day to keep you going, a diet drink is probably not high on the agenda, and I certainly haven’t seen anyone in need of a diet drink here. Some children regularly cycle 20kms each way each day to school. My purchases were few – some sachets of hair conditioner and a huge spray of insect killer. There were a few ants in the room and my request that they come and spray to remove them was met positively. But when they returned, the lovely floral design spray did look more like an air freshener, which it turns out, was exactly what it was, so now I still had ants as well as the most horrible air freshener smell permeating the room… But tonight, although by now antless (in more ways than one, I wish the real ant was here) I wish I had something even stronger – crawling across the floor was the biggest caterpillar type thing you can imagine…. That’s the problem with a rustic thatched bungalow however charming – unless it’s the kind I really prefer, i.e. one designed and run by a Leading Hotel of the World, hermetically sealed and sprayed to within an inch of its life, creatures are part of the experience. But at least here, a well tucked in mozzie net keeps me “safe” at night – not from mozzies, not too many of them, but from the geeko’s and other creatures that share my room and leave their calling card as small deposits on the floor next morning – lovely! Mid afternoon, I return from my $20 trip. I had overpaid according to the guys in at breakfast this morning, but in reality, for me it was a good deal, my own tuk tuk at my beck and call all day, covering 60kms and it seems churlish to argue over a few dollars when they are all fighting for a living. But my driver was not popular – when I returned, the hotel waiters were waiting, and even with my limited Khmer, I could see they were giving the driver a hard time - he took his $20 and sheepishly left.
