Stop the press! There is big news – we wore our jackets for at least 10 minutes the other day!!!!!! We went up the Bokor Mountain to the old abandoned colonial Hill Station and going up through the hill mist on the scooter we put on our jackets!!!!!
Even though I hate to be cold, I have to say that it was lovely to be cool for once (it was still flippin hot going for a run at 7.30am this morning and I have never sweated so much in a yoga class as last night at 5pm). Bokor Mountain is being slowly taken over by the Chinese who have so far built a hotel, a casino, a temple and now many apartments but you can still imagine the church and palace in their former glory with the French and Khmers escaping from the heat of Kampot.
And all this cloud and mountains makes for lovely rain and green grass (although there wasn’t much water flowing in the Popokvil Waterfall now that they have made a dam further up river (3rd pic down)). Bizarrely here your entrance ticket is a small bottle of water with the Chinese hotel printed on it. Despite plenty of bins, no littering signs and even the threat of a $50 sign, we got down to the falls and filled a carrier bag full of other people’s empty bottles.
The climate also makes for great pepper production which Kampot has become world famous for. We went to Sothy’s Eco Farm and had a tour of the process. It is very labour intensive and is now the harvesting period (March to May) so you can have fresh green pepper for the next few months – heaven! Every individual peppercorn is calibrated for size and checked for quality!
And it made for great Kampot curried crab…..
The fish markets in Kep (neighbouring coastal town) are amazing (if rather pungent in the midday heat).
And talking of food -our guesthouse on the river in Kampot (called Samon’s Village) do amazing food. Every morning we try a local Khmer breakfast and last night we both had the most amazing dinner. We also tried Greenhouse further up the river which is owned by Stephen, a French guy (and friend of Alex and Thomas from Sunset Bungalows in Koh Rong Samloem) and his menu is all around the use of Kampot pepper. I had a rare duck breast and Pete had a chicken dish, both were amazing and topped off with a chocolate and red pepper cookie – yum!
Also at our guesthouse we have stayed in a tree top bungalow overlooking the river which has been amazing. We just have curtains to draw across the sides of the bamboo building. So far we have shared with a frog, a 3 inch grass hopper (which was kindly eating the bugs on our mosquito net), a cat, a few geckos and probably other animals we may not wish to know about.
Great camouflage Mr frog- his head is pointing towards 7 o’clock!
It wasn’t so great between 2am and 4am on our last night when there was a huge thunder storm and extremely heavy rain. We discovered it was also raining inside our bungalow as the roof wasn’t watertight. We also had to move all our luggage as the curtains were soaked and offered no protection. The next morning the town’s roads were deeply flooded, as was a school and garage we passed but everyone just carried on as normal.
Next destination Phnom Penh. See you there.
#samonsvillage #happystaff #relaxingbytheriver
