Laurie's World

I have NO idea why some of my pictures are sideways. So I apologize for that. I’ll have my tech support look at it (Hahahaha). Now that he (Troy) spent most of yesterday debugging my blog, I’m sure he would LOVE to help me rotate pictures. I’ll work on convincing him 😘
Today I have very little to report. I successfully finished the novel I started yesterday and started another before I napped mid afternoon. Yes, it was that kind of day.

I must say the breakfast at the Kampot Riverside is exceptionally good. Pressed Coffee, juice, fruit bowl, then 2 eggs, bacon (real bacon!), fried tomatoes (yum!), baguette, butter pat AND jam! The baguette is really good (and I’m not a bread person…) so they was a lovely way to start the day. This hotel is owned/run by an Aussie (Rob) who understands the little things make A difference! There is a kettle and coffee/tea in the room, hand towels AND face cloths. There’s toiletries (including a sewing kit). Plus they change the sheets daily. There’s memory foam topper on bed (unheard  of). The AC works well plus there is a ceiling fan. This is a great place actually. It’s $40/night but we were paying $27 for the last place plus $8-$10 for brekkie so this is really the better bet. Troy chatted up the owner and apparently it is for sale. Who knows what will be happening here if and when we return someday. But for the time being, I’ll be giving it rave reviews on booking site and tripadvisor. There is construction next door that he feels badly about. But honestly there is construction everywhere we find, so it doesn’t bother us…..and he gives us cocktail vouchers to make up for the noise.

Post nap, We made our way back up Rusty Keyhole 2 for supper and I tried the chicken cordon bleu and Troy had pepperoni pizza (for the win). Honestly Troy’s “sharing” is really coming along and we split most meals these days. So get to try more stuff.

The pizza is really big (11.5″) and costs $9 and the chicken cordon bleu was $5.50. Two beers and an iced coffee totaled $17.25. It’s awfully cheap to eat like kings and queens here. Still can’t wait to get to Thailand and have non stop Thai food though.

My goodness we have played so hard since we arrived in Kampot, we just screeched to a halt and did not much of anything today.

Well not NOTHING. We did move hotels. Around noon, got ourselves sorted and packed up to move to our new digs down the street (closer to the hub bub).

When I went to settle the bill for breakfast bikes etc, I did have to chuckle when I saw a .50 cent line item for a butter pat. The English at the natural bungalows is non existent at best (other than the manager). At breakfast yesterday, Troy asked for ketchup for his eggs, she repeated “ketchup” a couple times and came back with this.

So as is our way here, we laugh and move on…..who really cares right?? Only to see a charge for the butter/ketchup……

Troy was opposed to shlepping the bags to the new place, so I was put in charge of hiring a Tuk Tuk to run us down to the new hotel. I saw a natural bungalow Tuk Tuk so asked the desk if they would take us. When I asked how much, he said, “up to you” 😳😳I personally like to know a hard number before setting off on these things bcz I don’t like trouble or awkwardness. But he skittled off so quickly to get the Tuk Tuk, I decided that $2 would do. That is enough to fill his entire tank with gas and it’s literally a 1km drive.

Troy comes down with bags and I tell the manager where to go, his face fell. I think he thought we were leaving leaving. Like we needed ride to bus depot. 😳oops. And I thought the money would be awkward. So when I get out $2, Troy gestured for more…..so he gives him $3. That’s guilt money for sure!!
Regardless, welcome home Troy and Laurie, at least for three nights until the winds take us back to phnom phen…..

As we’ve often noticed today and many other days, we don’t always get what we think we are ordering. We tried a new place for supper tonight. The Family Restaurant. It’s on the same street as Captain Chims. They had pita and hummus for $2 on the specials board. So we decide to try. It’s $2 right……the server repeats our order in English but looks really confused, so he goes to look at the specials board and writes something down. I even went over and he repeats “pita and hummus $2”. So I’m feeling pretty good about this now.

This is what came. Yes pita and hummus (we ate some before I took photo) but a mystery dish also. This doesn’t look like pita or hummus. We poke at it, sniff it, wait a bit for server to come back for it bcz it is someone else’s. Nope, he says it is ours “pita and hummus from board right?” He says “$2” oh man, this is funny. So we decide to eat it. Some kind of noodle and veggie dish. It was actually kinda good, and sure enough it said pita and hummus on bill and it was $2. So I have no explanation….other than I know I wouldn’t have A clue how to order it again.

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….