Kampot

ជំរាបសួរ Friends of the sun.

Our trip to Kampot started when we noticed the day before departure that our ferry from the island of Koh Rong Sanloem would be leaving from a completely different pier than we thought. Since there are no roads on the island, we had to think of something else. Walking would have been far too far with our backpacks, so we decided to take a taxi boat. We found one right on the beach and clarified with the taxi boat driver that he should take us to the other jetty the next morning at 8:00 a.m. and hoped that he would be punctual. The next morning, the four of us (with Phillip, who we met on the island) climbed into our private taxi boat and were driven to the pier. As we drove off, a frightened frog climbed out of Lena's shoe, having probably gotten lost there during the night. Poor little hop. We continued to the mainland by speed ferry. While Julian was busy trying to distract the woman next to him from puking, I tried to write the next post for our blog. In Sihanoukville we took a tuktuk to the bus station. We hadn't eaten anything yet, so Lena and I tried to find something to eat. Unfortunately without success as our bus wanted to leave. After about 2 hours we arrived in Kampot and drove to our next accommodation with our new taxi bro. The three of us first had to sleep there for one night in a large bungalow, as the bookings had apparently overlapped and our actual huts weren't available yet. Not so wild. Our taxibro (I still don't know his real name) offered us a tour of Kampot. So the next morning we started. We first took the tuktuk to the pepper farm. There we took a free tour and learned a lot about the cultivation and processing of pepper. We also had a pepper tasting, which Julian, as an old pepper lover, thought was great. I gave up after a few varieties because I couldn't stand the spiciness. After the farm, our taxi bro took us to a cave where we had absolutely no idea what to expect. A strange guy offered to guide us through the cave, which we accepted. We trudged up the mountain 200 steps, which was a different level of effort given the heat here in Cambodia. A short time later we arrived at a fairly large cave with a small temple that appears to be older than Kampot itself. We thought that was it for the cave tour. Hahaha. Wrong thought. Without further ado, the guy with his bad headlamp led us into a hole in the rock face. All of us in our flip-flops were absolutely not prepared for such an adventure and yet we dared to descend into the interior of the rock. As soon as we slipped through the rock face, we went down steeply for a few meters and we had to be careful not to slip and fall. From then on it was said that there was no way back. Once again, everyone would have been happy to have had Julian's headlamp with them, as it would have provided much better light. The tour was questionably dangerous in some places, and we had to climb through bat droppings more than once. The smell was still in our noses two days later. As strange and scary as the cave tour was at times, it was exciting and interesting at the same time. We would probably do it again at any time, but not in flip-flops again. Our last stop was the salt fields, which, in terms of spices, were a great match for our visit to the pepper farm, although less spectacular. That same evening we ordered passionfruit martinis in larger glasses and were given four huge pitchers by our host. The hangover was inevitable.

We spent the next day kayaking on a canal surrounded by thick palm trees with surprisingly few hangovers. The smell left a lot to be desired and we wouldn't have recommended anyone bathing in it, but the view was quite nice. We decided to continue traveling with Lena and so we booked our further trip on the night bus to Siem Reap to the largest temple in the world.

លាហើយ