This is our first night in Kampot and we are sitting in the forecourt dining area of the Bokor Mountain Lodge a very inaccurately described resteraunt and hotel on the Kampot riverfront. The atmosphere is old french and the decor similar. Very colonial my dear. There is a market area and boulevarde behind that is so classic of french colonial architecture around about the turn of the century 20th that is.....1900 or there abouts. The whole town has this flavour, I keep expecting to bump into Jean Paul Belmondo playing a sultry colonial in some french period movie!
Jacqui and I spent 2 nights in Sihanoukville on a beach that I still can't pronounce let alone remember the spelling of. Sihanoukville is everything everyone says about it. It is a contradiction within its own contradiction. On the one hand it is the vulgar expression of tourism, right in your face! Byron Bay by 1000%! It is also bloody good fun and a very decadent way to "chill". It is the perfect place to people watch on a multicultural scale. The experience on reflection was very very interesting. We had the opportunity, vacarious though it was to observe groups of various different people going about thier lives. One night we were assailed by a group of, for me very young Cambodians determined to have a really good time. And boy did they have a good time! I was proud for thier age, they did very well. They were a group of teacher students from Siem Reap.There were a number of observatIons that could be made easily; Men treated women with a great deal of respect. This was obvious in thier behavior. Mind you like all young men with burgeoning hormones I am willing to bet that in thier minds were all of the negative aspects that give women grief. It is one of those "human " things that men don't seem to be able to control. Other things on notice were the cultural aspects of interaction. How, when individuals were communicating the body language had no parrellel in the west. Some one with a severe case of homophobia would say that by the way men danced with other men ( a common occurence) that they were all raging queens. This of course is not true in any shape manner or form. It is just that men being used to dancing with men, as they are, they are much more relaxed and uninhibited. Thier dance of course gets the young ladies fired up. Then the games begin. After very loud dancing music, time got on so they moved to the beach with a huge great fire. I kept expecting to see Anette Funicello or Gidget somewhere in the crowd. The previous evening we had the privilige of the lives and living of expats in southern Cambodia. The life is good by all accounts. While in Sihanoukville we took a drive out to the national park in the area. It was a 30km terrifying ride out on the highway to Phnom Penh. Mad truck and bus drivers, I swear to you Cambodians are the worst drivers in South East Asia, diabolical! They should be banned from all forms of transport except a 2 wheeled machine. After all they drive everything as if it was a motorbike! Truck, bus whatever!
Back to Kampot. People this is the place you wanted it to be! Beautiful with lovely french colonial architecture, a bit raggety, a bit worn at the seams but lovely all the same. We had a bit of a downer on arrival... no cooking lessons and it looked like Rabbit Island may be full! I was quite down at heal. Disappointed for the first time on the trip. My disappointments were very short lived. The morning brought on our desire to press on regardless and follow our plan to go cave tramping. We mounted up and rode out of town. We roared down the road and in no time we were in Kep! We had indeed roared past our turn off some 15km before! Rather than waste the moment however we decided to "sus the crack" with regard to Kep and the mysterious Rabbit Island! Turns out this was a really good move; we organised accommodation for 5 nights on the island, we organised the return boat trip, we organised somewhere to store the bike and we booked 2 nights accommodation in Kep. Then we paid for the lot! Done and dusted an elated Lionel sat down to a really big and strong coffee and realised that life was really wonderful and keeps giving you good times. If we hadn't got lost and missed the turn off we would not have got the rest of the trip absolutely sorted! Kismet at work again!
We finally found our cave and did the exploring thing. We then got the "gen" where the other cave with a temple inside of it was. It is a 7th century building from the Funan period. A Temple to Shiva. We had lunch in Kampot and then went to the temple and elephant cave. It was extremely interesting. Jacqui and I enjoyed ourselves, clambering up and down irregular stairs. We checked out the temple that felt like a miniature of that famous one in Jordan and managed the small horde of children haggling for whatever.
I am now off to cocktails by the river see youse soon.
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