Indochina 2010: Salt and Pepper (Kam)pot

... with apologies to Brian and Sara for plagiarising the title they gave to their visit here earlier this year!

Kampot is a quaint, fairly run-down in parts, riverside town overlooking the Elephant Mountains (well, hills really, but we won't make a molehill out of that)..   It's famous for its salt production, as well as boasting the world's highest quality pepper.   We spent today (Friday 12th) having a look at a pepper plantation, as well as visiting the tiny seaside town of Kep - a round trip of about 70km on a Tuk-tuk on red dirt/clay/boulder-strewn roads.   Hmmm!   Our hotel room in Kampot is absolutely wonderful!   We're staying in 'The Green Room' at the Moliden guesthouse overlooking the river and the mountains.   The Green Room itself is newly opened in this wonderful old building, which features lots of lovely, stylishly-done, old, dark wood - very colonial indeed.   We have a double-aspect room, in which there is also a double-aspect bathroom - it's a large room in one corner of the bedroom, complete with modern corner bath and bathroom fittings - though we can't work out how to drain the water from the washbasin - the walls of which are, however, floor-to-ceiling windows.   For modesty's sake, though, there are long, lime-green, organza curtains which can be pulled across - and which beautifully complement the lime-green window-curtains and lime-green bedding.   It's an absolutely gorgeous room, with our own balcony looking over the river and the downstairs pavement restaurant area - and we have our own hammock and outdoor wooden staircase entrance here too!   In fact, I'm sitting in the hammock typing this while Andy roams around below, taking pictures of the wonderful sunset here this evening.   Just before he left, though, I'd had a little bit of a spook:   I'd gone into our posh bathroom for a luxurious soak in the bath, only to discover a mouse (yes, a mouse!) swimming/drowning in the washbasin whose water we hadn't managed to drain away.   Quite a shock really, which made me go all 'girlie' - I shrieked, ran out, and demanded that Andy do something about it!   He, aided and abetted by one of the staff members, managed to both to rescue the mouse - just alive, I think - and work out how to drain the basin.   Phew!

We'd arrived here yesterday by bus from Sihanoukville.   I think I've already said that our pace will be slower from here on, and the two-and-a-half days by the beach there have certainly started that predicted slower pace.    Our hotel in Sihanoukville (recommended to us by the incredibly friendly and helpful staff at the Phnom Penh hotel) was right on the beach-front in the Occheutal beach area.   On arrival, we were greeted like long-lost friends - turns out the young front-of-house manager here is a cousin of the people in Phnom Penh.   We'd left Phnom Penh by bus, but only thanks to talking, in the midst of the mayhem which counts as a 'bus station' there, to a pair of 20-something English girls who are identical twins - Rachel and Robyn (or was it Robyn and Rachel?).   Somehow they'd discovered which of the many un-numbered, un-identified buses was going to Sihanoukville, and we spent an interesting 4 hours chatting to them whilst watching the comings and goings of passengers at every bus-stop in the towns and toll-booths along the way.   Several times we stopped in roadside towns and took on board (well, in the separate luggage compartment accessed from outside of the coach, really) bags of rice, cages of live chickens, boxes of electrical equipment, and an ice-box full of crabs.   And we noticed that, on at least three occasions at the road-tolls, no money changed hands, but baskets of bread or bags of other foodstuffs did. We're still not sure if this was the toll-fee being paid 'in kind', or whether the bus driver had simply been 'running errands' for the toll-booth workers.

Anyway, back to Sihanoukville.   We spent two days there on or around the currently unspoilt Otres beach, meeting up again with Rachael and Robyn for a long chat.   It's a few kilometres from where we were actually staying but, as yet anyway, Otres has no modern hotels or neon lights - only palm-thatched, rudimentary bungalows and a few very laid-back local bars/restaurants.   It overlooks a number of the lovely islands off the coast here, three of which we visited on a boat-trip on one of the days.   The pair of us, together with two fun-loving New Zealand women, Lucy and Angie, were given breakfast on the beach and then taken to the first of the three islands, where we swam and snorkeled for a while.   We then went off to a second beach, on Bamboo Island, where the two boat-crew boys set up a barbecue and cooked us a wonderful barracuda lunch, while we swam and sun-bathed - and heard Lucy and Angie's horrific story of having been rescued from one of the Thai islands the week before, in the midst of a horrendous storm.   Apparently, several Thai islands were seriously affected by the storm, and the Thai navy had been mobilised to mount an emergency rescue/evacuation - SO glad we decided to come to Cambodia instead!    After lunch, and a walk around Bamboo Island (which has NO bamboo as far as we could see!), we went on to a third island for more swimming/snorkeling, before heading back to Otres beach for a seafood dinner and a couple (or more) cocktails with the two Kiwis.   Then we were taken back to our hotel on the back of the moto which had collected us early that morning - the three of us jiggling and weaving around on the red-dirt, heavily riveted, 4km-long track back to the Occheutal beach area.   Really good for the digestion!

Well, the sun has now set here in Kampot, and it's time to go out to dinner.   Tomorrow we leave for Takeo, where we hope to do some volunteering in the New Futures Orphanage.   More anon....