Laurie's World

In spite of my iPad objecting strongly to the workload, I was able to get the blog caught up today. I am tech challenged so getting pictures in there is tough, and also, I don’t deal well with change, and the stupid WordPress app and or website (or whatever I am using) keeps changing from year to year. So I have to relearn the process to blog every july when it is time to blog…..ok, I’ve vented, I feel better. 

Had great weather today, chicken amok for lunch and pumpkin soup for supper, so I am a happy girl right now. Walked to town for each of these meals, so feeling justified. We will be changing hotels tomorrow to one that is right in the thick of the action. I kind of wish I had found one with a pool as it is SO stinking hot here, but that would have put us even further out of town, and I didn’t want that. So it is what it is….
I have half a dozen bites on each one of my legs atm. I don’t tell you this to worry you mom, yes, I have been applying bug spray, but these are not mosquito bites, they are primarily ants I think. I had a bad interaction with an ant hill yesterday on our travels I think, and there were a few on my shoe…so by the time I got them off, they had nibbled on me a bit. I’ll be fine, they are just really itchy. I am trying to get sympathy mostly. 

TTFN

Big big day today, 113 Kms travelled. Went rogue on breakfast and thought that we would try Captain Chims breakfast. Heard it was tasty, was that ever right. Spent $5 and got coffee, three lime sugar pancakes (let’s be honest they are crepes) two eggs, bacon and baguette. Very very good breakfast! We were up, had eaten and out on road by not much after 8am. We are early to bed and early to rise these days. Kind of like my usual life (but this is a shift in habits for Troy who is usually up until much later, the sleeps later than me). But what I must say is, it is not vacation mode per se. We wanted to ride down to the Kep area, so wanted to make sure we got out while the sun shone (just in case rain came-which spoiler alert, it did not)

The crab market in Kep is kind of famous and we knew as soon as we pulled up it was bigger and more robust that before. At least twice the size. 

It is such chaos, but somehow those people know just what is going on. They have been doing it their whole life I suppose and maybe their family before them, so somehow, they just know….I marvel at the fact that are are any crab left in the sea given the volume that is pulled out of that exact spot every day 365 days a year. They pull up shrimp, crab, fish, clams everything actually, then the ladies crouch down and sort it all out, picking out what they are looking for.

 Then they put it in water and sell is wholesale style, or cook it up and sell it for immediate consumption. The grills are all fired up and you can buy cuddle fish, oysters, stingray, shrimp, whole fish, and all kinds of things I would never eat. 

There is also of course the trinkets, fruit and crafts, rice in banana leaves and the one thing I would eat….waffles. I bought the same two waffles I bought before, and then I remembered something as I bite into one of them. It is filled with a very strange filling. It is like a sugar cane coconut mixture. Sounds good, but there is something weird about the texture. The other one is a sweet coconut waffls shaped like a flower. Different than Thailand waffles, but still good. If I am ever back this way, I simply must remember to not buy the thick one that is divided into four sections. PS, I do not know what anything else on this table is. 😳

We carried on our travels to the beach area . Gorgeous beach, packed full of local families enjoying the sun and the surf on a Sunday. It was very full in the main area, and perhaps too pricey for some families to pay the chair fee, so they just spilled out onto the sidewalks right up in the road area before the beach area officially started. They had mats, chairs and coolers, food, drink, music, inner tubes. I guess the beach experience is universal isn’t it?

The guys climbed up into what I can only assume is a lifeguard tower? Although the mats and chair were there, I saw no sign of an actual lifeguard, and it was a little far away from the action. Who knows!

We continued on from this busy crowded area and went left up into Kep national park. There is an 8km loop that costs $1 to use that we decided to explore. In all honesty, we didn’t know what it was when we started, but we figured it out at some point. Troy’s phone has a map app on it that we could always see where we “were”…so we always knew we were still in Cambodia, the whole day 😉

The sky and the ocean are so blue, they just blend together, you can not tell where one ends and the other begins….

Beautiful views, and even a remarkable fig tree!

After this loop, we saw something on the map that had something to do with nuns or something. So we drove straight up the freaking mountain (again)-do you sense my enthusiasm for his trail. This one just about did me in. I was getting tired at this point and I now know that coming down is a lot more work than going up. THis holds true for hiki as well as bike riding. The amount of strength required to keep the bike up, out of the jungle or the creek or not over the cliff and over all the rocks while holding both brakes (in 95 degree heat) is tremendous. I’m not complaining, it was fun, I’m just saying I was getting tired…anyway, the nun place was lame…so that was a bust and i have no pictures….

We did however find the Rusty Keyhole 3. Had an awesome lunch in the most out of the way restaurant in the middle of nowhere. It was literally in the countryside surrounded by fields and cows. Crazy….i hope they can make a go of it. I had a BBQ chicken sandwhich for $3.50 and troy had poutine for $4.25, landon a greek salad. good stuff
We went back to find the deserted eco lodge that we stumbled across before. It is still there and still just as overtaken by the jungle. There were two dogs and we had the distinct pleasure of watching them catch a mouse and then do what they i guess when they live in the wild. yuck

There is a “shortcut” on the map to go to a place we want to see. The term Shortcut makes me nervous, but what could happen? We are always free to turn around right? It literally said shortcut on the map. It started out great as you can see in these pictures.

Some sweet water buffalo, long tail fishing boats, a village every so often, looks like paradise right? Well indeed it was, right up to and including where the road turned into a 9″ max retaining wall of a rice field. Not a chance I was going to navigate that. Thus the painful flashbacks from last year in Laos began. Pretty sure if I checked my heart rate on the Fitbit app, I would see an immediate spike right then and there. Despite the strong encouragement we got from the herd of village children that gathered to watch the crazy people (US) there was no way we would make it. They were laughing and pointing the way (and asking for $-thank you Landon for the translation). At this time, I do not have a picture. But I will try to round one up for the blog.
We made it back home in one piece, had an amazing supper at the Italian place, then crawled into bed exhausted . Oh yea, I may have stopped for a foot massage before supper. I figured I deserved some pampering….oh yea, I also may have stopped at Bokor mountain lodge for happy hour before I walked over to supper. 🍹
Life is good…

Another day with perfect weather. We are having such great weather! Other than supper time the first day here and a late morning rainstorm today that lasted less than 2 hours, We’ve had gorgeous sun. Certainly can’t complain about that! We trotted back down to the breakfast place for another yummy big breakfast. If it ain’t broke, why fix it. You simply can’t beat this breakfast for flavour or price 😉
As I wandered back from breakfast, I was struck by how beautiful this view of the river is…

This old bridge is now closed, no wonder really, when we crossed it two years ago, it was a death trap. At that time, There were large holes in the metal grating that would have swallowed a tire whole if you weren’t paying attention. So it is gated off and marked closed, but in true SE Asia fashion, the people do what they want. Many just go around the barricades and cross anyway. We even saw a child riding her bike back and forth (for fun I assume?)

As I walked the riverfront, I saw a man out there cleaning a large piece of plastic. I find this fascinating. In my culture, we would just throw it out if it was gross and get a new piece of plastic from Home Depot when we needed it. Here, they clean, reuse, refurbish and recycle, THEN use it for protection against wind and rain on their shelter before it disentigrates and blows away in chunks in the wind. There could be something to this……granted I am not sure what was on that plastic that THIS river water would make it cleaner, but hats off to him for trying!

Landon decided to lay low today but Troy and I decided to go out adventuring on the bikes after the rain let up. So we headed out of town in a direction we had not gone yet. We ended up driving through a salt farming area. Maybe salt harvesting is a better way to describe it. We saw this before when we were here, but it is still kind of neat to think about where salt comes from. The ocean of course. They flood their fields with sea water, then let it evaporate and what is left behind? Salt! Then they collect it, and store it in barns, then bag it up and export it all over the world. Nifty….

What I am learning (although I should already know this) is that the concept of a road here is a very loose thing. Pretty much every time we go out on bikes, we follow a map that indicates roughly where the “roads” are. Sometimes they are paved and decently passable, albeit with potholes and broken up asphalt, other times they are narrow, rutted, flooded dirt paths that a goat would struggle to traverse.  Often we end up on these kinds of paths due to the nature of where we want to go. Often pictures do not do these situations justice, you just have to take my word for it…..BUT we do see things and get to go places that others do not, so I don’t take the opportunity for granted. And given the learning that occurred in Laos last year, I am incredibly cautious about where I go.

We pass this playground several times a day when we come and go from the hotel, and I am continually shocked that a metal slide can be useful in a playground here with this sun and these temperatures.

Ended the day with a Pedicure from the same place I went for a foot massage on our first night here. Called Golden hands massage. I may have dozed off right a the end of the pedi….

We decided to have breakfast somewhere other than the hotel today as we figured if we are paying, we might as well see what else it out there. So we got ourselves up bright and early and went to the Main Street where there are lots of restaurants. We found a place with breakfast options and ordered a “big breakfast” sausage, bacon, eggs, toast, mashed potato and coffee for $4. How could this not be great! We had a omelette, bread and coffee at hotel for $3.50 yesterday. As it turns out, it was really quite good. It was real bacon and real sausage! Some times here they try to pass a hotdog off as sausage. I’m always sceptical until I see it.

We ate up heartily and were on the road by 8am. Off to Bokor mountain today. Hoping for better weather than the last time were here when about halfway up the mountain, we drove in rain and fog and it was freezing. Actually!

The views are amazing…

It took about an hour to climb this windy mountain road, but the pavement is good and it is fun to ride on these curvy roads, it’s so quiet and there is no traffic…..

We stopped at some beautiful waterfalls. popokvil waterfalls, my boys got some Great photos I am sure. They were slightly more adventurous in where they were willing to climb out to than I was.

The weather was better than our last trip up. Although there were some definite fog patches. We saw the “old casino, the “Catholic Church” and a lovely temple that was inundated with tourists….

The boys put on their headlamps to explore the basement of the old casino. I passed. I would have happily gone along, but darn it we only have two headlamps!

Since we were up and at it so early, we were home by mid afternoon. We did stop in town and have lunch, then after a brief rest up at the hotel, troy and I went back out on our bikes. We ventured off to explore a resort called Nataya. It was beautiful, but a ways out of town, so not likely we would stay here, but they had an ocean pool which we thought was really neat, (clearly under maintenance at the moment) and this long pier that had a couple grass huts attached, this looked like new construction, so not sure how it all works, but possibly you rent them or something?

Believe it or not the rooms at this resort are only ~$45 USD a night. Amazing.
Sometimes when you fill up with gas at a station, they give you a little snack/treat. This was our treat today. Believe it or not, it was tasty…yes, I ate it. Gas station treat….

All things considered it was not a horrible first night sleep. We were safely tucked in by 8pm. Hit the wall not long after the pizza….so made our way right back to hotel. I woke up briefly at midnight then not again until 6am. We were at breakfast by 7:10am only to discover I’d booked the room without breakfast included but alas we could purchase breakfast of course. $2.50 for a omelette and 1/2 baguette and another $1 for back coffee. Would have berm $1.50 for coffee with milk, I decided to try black. This part of the country is not known (in my books) as being great at their coffee. It’s usually very strong and well….just really strong. Anyway, it was actually palatable and the omelette was tasty. So all in all great start to the day.

After we researched weather predictions, we decided to rent bikes and head out into the world. We rented bikes for $5/day right from our hotel. This worked out great as now we wouldn’t have to turn our passports over to strangers.

In hindsight, we should have applied the sunscreen more liberally. It was certainly warmer than we were thinking it would be.

We stopped along the way to take pictures, enjoy the river and take selfies (of course). Up by where the dam is located there was a side road with a hut and a “guard” that was gesturing to us to go down the lane. (VS going towards the dam-which we know isn’t allowed 😉). So we decide to turn off. A very short way in,there is a booth with a sign that indicates it is 10,000 R ($2.50 USD)  to pass through. They assure us it is worth it, there are waterfalls etc up there. We pay up and pass through. Indeed after a short drive up a hillside on a tutted dirt path, there were lovely waterfalls. We park our bikes in the designated area and a young man comes out and tags our bikes. Hmmm, why would they do this? More on this later.

We had fun walking up the remaining stairs/hillside to reach the top where the waterfall was. Got some refreshing time in the cool water and enjoying the view.

Landon decided to be funny guy and snag Sam and run her under the waterfall. It started out as expected…..

But it went south very quickly when he slipped on these very slippery rocks. And they both went down…….

 Luckily Sam is a good sport and didn’t clock Landon right back for this bit of monkey business.

There were millions of butterflies in this whole area, starting from right down on the road before we came into park area. Hoping to include a video….so you can see what a small portion of it looked like.
Now, to finish the tale of the parking, after we were done wandering around, we went over to where our bikes were parked.

The cutest (and I mean cutest) little girl runs up to us and indicates we need to pay 1,000 riel to take our bikes. Hahaha, the shake down never ends…..but it is what it is (.25 cents) and she is cute, but I want my picture!!

After all this excitement, we remembered the purpose of coming to this area was to stop and buy durian. The infamous durian that is so smelly it is banned from most hotels in Thailand. Can’t say ice seen the same postings I hotels here in Cambodia, but regardless, it is infamous for being really really smelly. We’ve never tried it.

But we did as Sam really wanted us to try it. Here is Troy’s face as he us trying to figure out what he is eating.

It doesn’t taste as bad as it smells (thankfully). It has the texture of soft avocado, but tastes like cantaloupe. I don’t care do cantaloupe so that knocks me out of the competition. And Troy doesn’t care for the texture of avocado, so now that we’ve tried it, we are good. Landon was not a big fan either……

Durian is rock hard on the outside with super sharp spikes. Like nails, it sharper….poor Landon got injured when a couple durians rolled off the table and his reflexes prompted him to try to catch them. One with his hand and the other with his leg. Ouch…..
Given the time (noon) the decision was made to head back to town for some lunch. We went to Captain Chims to try to get the famous red soup that we were unsuccessful in securing two years ago. We ate like kings, red soup, amok, lol lak, crab satay, drinks. All this for $20

We had to have Sam back to hotel and ready for minivan back to phnom phen for 3pm. So we did that, then Landon troy and I headed back out on the bikes around 4pm. We went back to the “island” that we attempted a couple years ago. The weather was not nearly as cooperative as it was getting windy and rainy. But we still had fun and I was able to work through some of the vivid flashbacks I was having about driving a bike on a rutted, snotty, red dirt path right alongside a body of water……

So we got ourselves off and running on time Monday night.  The girls drove us to the airport for our 1:50am flight on EVA air. Our first leg was about 12 hours. We had a 4 hour layover in Taipei, Taiwan. I’ve not been to this particular airport before, Troy Brooklyn and Russill did a few years back. It is an interesting place with every lounge having a theme. Hello kitty, the library, postal service, jungle…..the list goes on.

The bathrooms had a customer service screen at each exit where you just tap a face to review your experience. Hahaha I wonder what they do with this info…..

And of course the Asian commitment to cleanliness. Love these signs.

We arrived in phnom phen and Landon and Sam were right there waiting for us. A quick stop at DQ and we were on our way.
We rode in a private car to Kampot that Sam arranged. $40….best money spent. 😃

I booked a room at the Natural Bungalows in Kampot where we stayed for 10 days a couple years ago. And low and behold, look who I found perched on the bed frame

My trusty travel companions……they go everywhere with me!
We walked about for a bit, I got myself a $6 foot massage, then we made our way to the Rusty Keyhole  2 and had some amazing pizza, cheese fries and saw the cutest little restaurant pup.