Kampot and Kep

3 and 4/5/2011

how to properly load a truck

Kampot didn’t have much to offer.  I was originally going to stay two nights and spend a day cycling up to the Bokor Hill Station (10km out of Kampot and about 20km up a hill).  This was a resort constructed in the 1960’s by the French that overlooked the district and is set in the Bokor national park.  It is now abandoned and is like a ghost town.  Thought it would cool to see it and bike through the national park but after checking the road on my way over to Kampot I found out it was closed due to construction and no access was allowed.  Oh well saved me busting my gut up the hill, was looking forward to the view though!

Some of the traffic along the way...

The Salt and Pepper Bakery - my shelter and good
food, cookies and all!

So off to Kep the following day only 25km away which was lucky because I was super closer to getting caught in a massive downpour on my way over.  Luckily got to the turn off and the Salt and Pepper Bakery where I stopped for a good feed and the rain to stop before continuing on into Kep. 

Kep was another nice beachside town,  pretty quiet and a nice relaxing atmosphere to the place.  Took a wonder up to a weirdly overgrown Temple that I couldn’t figure out if it was still used or not.

Along the beach frontage at Kep

The guesthouse I stayed at was run by a French man who was on a one year contract to see how he enjoyed it.  He was a funny fella, super enthusiastic about Kep, owned a wobbly pool table and was a great cook.  He bought a big barracuda for me for dinner and infused some amazing flavours into it.  It was awesome!  Got talking with guy from the UK who had lived in NZ for a bit and reminisced about times in NZ and the pies eaten.  Looking forward to one of those again, Hororata Pub chicken and mushroom pie with cranberry sauce on top!  I had previously seen a place in Kampot called Homestay Café which apparently is famous for its Kampot pie – they had the meat but no dough so no pie. Gutted.  Nice German couple that ran the place, but nice doesn’t get you pies!

The long steep staircase up and then there was more

There were loads of these carved animal statues, gold one side of the temple and silver the other but everything seemed very much abandoned but the temple still looked well maintained apart from the jungle starting to overgrow it.

The view from the Temple and the statue with a four sided face.
It's creepy as it is always looking at you!

Who wouldn't want this statue in their town...