Kep

Miss Alex and I arrived in Kep from Kampot on Monday 6/2/2012 in a tuc tuc, its fair to say our tuc tuc ride was more enjoyable than some of our payed trips and took us an hour. We may just pay a tuc tuc driver to drive us around one day. Miss Alex was reading her book and I noticed that the cattle on the roadside, at this point I‘ll let you know that every family home here, has 3 cows, a couple of dogs and one chicken with a load of chicks in toe. Anyway I noticed the cows on the side of the road just eating from the bits of rubbish everywhere. So then I started asking myself isn’t that what Mad Cows Disease was all about in the 80s and 90s? So with this in mind I’m debating whether to go Vegetarian for the rest of South East Asia. (Until next time I want a bacon butty) Miss Alex has already said she’ll be going Veggie in Vietnam because she’ll never forgive herself if she accidently has dog in one of her curries. This happened to me on my last job I was on before I came away Globe trotting.  It was a Belgium boat with Belgium crew and one night they served up a stew, which in all honesty tasted nice until the chef decided to tell us it was horse. Only after we’d finished we were told this. I then I had a sad picture of a poor horse having one bad day at the races, then next thing its sold on as meat.

We arrived at Kep with a guesthouse in mind, we don’t normally pre look for accommodation but this time I had one thing in mind. I’d researched on the internet for a guesthouse with satellite tv, Liverpool were playing last night and I wanted a guesthouse with satellite for me to watch it. The guesthouse was called Reaksmey and for $10 I think we have a really smart room, especially with the satellite tv for me to watch the match. Although miss Alex might disagree as we have no sink in the bathroom.

So once we checked in we threw the bags in and headed for the “famous” crab market. It is literally 2 minutes from the guesthouse. I was still a bit delicate from my illness, so the smell of fish and crabs knocked me sideways. There’s about 15 little restaurants in a row just past the crab market and guess what they all sell? Crab and fish, so the menu for each restaurant had a choice of Crab soup, fish curry red, fish curry green, pizza with crab, pizza with crab and anchovies (why would anyone do that to a pizza?)

A little further down the road from the crab market we found a Cambodian bloke 50 foot up a coconut tree chopping down coconuts. As I got our camera out to take a picture of him that high up, a bunch of coconuts came hurtling down to the ground and landed about 20 foot away from us. The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) would have a field day over here. They’d have probably asked him where his High Viz jacket was. Like it would have helped!!

In the Evening we went for a run, we’d been gone for a while and dusk was settling in, you may think the major problem now is getting lost. Nope it’s the dogs that every family has. These dogs are guard dogs and if you step on there territory you will know about it in the morning.  A dog then approaches us on our way home, starting to snarl at us, miss Alex starts off with the “good doggie” approach, it still edges closer until miss Alex snaps “NO, GO AWAY NAUGHTY DOGGIE” and the dog backed off and left us to it. We have been told that it can be a common occurrence for dogs to approach in a nasty manner, but the way to get out of it is imitate throwing a stone at them and they will soon scarper. Coming home last night from a couple of drinks we also found this technique to work. I did have a real stone in my hand ready and cocked.

Today we went for breakfast next door as the perfect guesthouse I’d chosen doesn’t just not have a sink, but they also don’t have a restaurant. (they do have satellite though) The food was sub standard and instead of ice cwoffees we got hot cwoffees. Miss Alex ordered chocolate and banana pancake and got just a banana pancake. I felt much better as the lady had added the total of the bill up wrong. Instead of $7 we paid $6. On the way back the 2 dogs from restaurant followed us all the way home, on the way there was a bit of stand off between a near by neighbours dogs, but the 2 dogs still followed us. One of these dogs in particular was all black lady dog and she looked real old. She even talked to us like a certain little furry friend back in Scarbrough does. Miss Alex had a soft spot for this dog and when we eventually got to the gates of the guesthouse the dog stopped as if knowing not to come in through the gates. We felt terrible, as we’d let this dog walk with us then we had to leave it at the gates. Also at some point the 2 dogs would probably have to go past the near by neighbours dogs again to get home. The rest of the day was spent at the very small beach, then we decided to treat our selves to a massage.

Tonight we’ve booked our bus to Vietnam for the morning, so by tomorrow night we’ll be in Ho Chi Min, or as the oldies would say Saigon.

Although some parts of Cambodia have been hard to stomach, ie The Killing Field and Tuol Sleng Prison, I’ve enjoyed other parts. Sihanoukville was good for the reunion with the 2 Sams and Harry & Laura. Kampot is probably our favourite place even though we only had a couple of days there, a couple of days was enough to chill out. Imagine a small French town on a Sunday afternoon and that was the feeling in the atmosphere. We are really looking forward to Vietnam and plenty more discoveries along the way.

Speak Soon xxx