After a long week teaching myself and the bold Sophie left the village Friday evening and hitched a lift into Phnom Penh, ready to catch a bus the next morning to Kep for some beach action. Now, hitchhiking is something I wouldn't ever dare to do back in Europe but yeah, hitchhiking in Cambodia? Oh yeah, that's fine. We actually managed to hitch a ride with some American-Cambodians who told us about their dramatic escape from the country in 1975 away from the Khmer Rouge. The husband lost his entire family and the wife had lost brothers and sisters. The wife was particularly chatty, told us she'd met up with an old friend a few days before, she hadn't seen him since 1969. She whipped out a pack of photos to show us. Guess who her friend was? Only the King of Cambodia. Turned out they were playmates back in the day. Always an adventure travelling around Cambodia.
After our royal hitchhike, Friday night in Phnom Penh can be summed up in the following way: it was 10PM, then it was 1AM and then it was suddenly 6AM. Queue our mad dash back to the guesthouse to grab a bag before getting the bus at 7AM.
So where were we dashing off to? We were off to Kep, the original seaside resort in Cambodia. Myself and Sophie thought it would be nice to take a few days in a quiet place in the sun. That's exactly what we got. Our first day, as you can imagine when losing a nights sleep, we napped up a storm on Kep beach with a few dips in the sea in between dreams. We had read that the beach was rocky but a French lady informed us that they've been bringing up sand from Sihanoukville for a while now. We actually saw them unload the trucks the next day.
Sunday we ventured over to Rabbit Island, a 25 minute boat ride from the main land. There isn't much to say really, it's a gorgeous island with some lovely views but I wouldn't spend longer than a day there. We got back from the island at around 4.30 and met a Dutch friend of mine at the bus stop. Her bus had taken two hours longer than expected and she wasn't able to make it over to the island to meet us. Not to worry, we took the loop road by the sea all the way up to the crab market and had a few drinks, snacks and crab dinners to finish the day off. Since Kep pretty much closes down at 11 every night we decided to walk back to our guesthouse which was actually pretty stupid because the street was unlit and it was a 2KM walk. The girls were worried about dogs biting them which, in fairness, is a genuine worry. I was far more concerned about getting robbed. Which is why I picked up a sturdy looking stick, Rambo style, for the walk home. In the end we were fine.
Next morning we were up bright and early and set off for a small trek in Kep National Park. It's an 8KM circle up some 'mountains'. I didn't make it explicit to the girls but some of the reviews said that snakes and tarantulas had been spotted there. I can't say if I was relieved or disappointed but we didn't see either. I even had my trusty stick with me. The walk was fantastic, some great views over Kep and even Kampot and the whole bay. We didn't make it the whole way round as we went off-road when we saw a sign pointing to 'Jasmine Valley'. About 190m along a dirt track we found the most amazing resort. It's really built into the landscape and if you didn't follow the sign we saw you'd have no idea it was there. We had a coconut drink and let their resident nibbly-fish give us a pedicure. Then, before we sat ourselves back on the bus to Phnom Penh we took a dip in the sea and had the most amazing tuna sandwich. So amazing I'm mentioning it here.
And that's that. We got back to Phnom Penh at around 7 to our usual guesthouse with a sweet sounding 'oh, it's you' - which we feel we probably earned because of our mad dash from the night club to the bus the previous Saturday morning. Right now, we are back in the school already knee deep in teaching. I'm a bit sad to say that next week is already my last week here. I'm putting together a few thoughts on the direction my classes should take in the coming weeks. It all just went so fast...
P.S. Still no water in the village.
