July 16th, 2014
A day in the country…
So this is bad news folks. I forgot my camera today, so if you want to see pictures, you may have to click over to Troy’s blog….
I slept well last night, maybe Troy not so much, apparently he spent a large portion of the night battling nature in our room. I see a piece of toilet paper stuffed into a hole in the corner of the ceiling 😉. Plus there was a massive thunder and lightening storm (I did wake up once to that), but did go back to sleep quite easily. My light sleeping darling did not perhaps. 😥
The day started with an omelette and a warm crusty roll for breakfast, plus one cup of very very strong coffee on the beautiful setting of the river. What else do we need I ask??
We had asked our new tuk tuk friend Bun Loung, to pick us up at 9am to start our trek into the countryside. We knew we were going to see a pepper plantation and also a salt place. But not sure about the rest….the country (that’s what I heard). I asked him where we were going and he said “the killing fields” no joke, he said that! I was looked at Troy and said, “I don’t want to do that again”. I know there are many many places (~300) where this happened in this country. But I decided to let it ride and see what he meant. We got to a place that looked like a temple with many pagodas etc. Sure enough it was just that, there was one large glass case of skulls and bones with a Buddha where people come to pray, but other than that, nothing like the place we went before. It seemed like many other temples we have been to, just with a Cambodian flare (vs the Thai flare) I can actually tell the difference now! There really is a difference.
After that we did go to a salt “farm” not sure if that is what it is called. It looks exactly like rice paddies, except they flood them with sea water (there is a river very close by that is fed by the ocean) and then let them dry out/evaporate and viola, salt is left behind. Apparently it takes 14 days to dry up. They scoop the salt up, put it in a shed, then bag it up and take it to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap to sell. So strange….I never really thought about where salt comes from. Still not at all sure how they get it off the soil without collecting a tonne of dirt along with it. But alas we are not in the season to see that part of the process. We are in the bag it up out of the shed season 😀
We also saw a lot of rice paddies, which of course we have seen before, but also amazes me what a load of work that is. We understand from Vanna that while it takes longer to harvest by hand….there is much less wasted rice, so all in all a better way to do it. Plus the machine to harvest rice is probably expensive, so most farmers can not afford this?
We also went to Starling Farms. This is apparently the most famous and very best Kampot pepper. And apparently Kampot pepper is the best in the world. So yes, we bought some. I am sure I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, but I’m not a pepper person. A pepper lover might, but that’s not me. We will have to do blind taste tests when we get home.
We rode on some of the very smallest roughest potholed filled back woods paths (I won’t call them roads) that you can imagine. All in an open air tuk tuk. We went to an area where we had the pleasure of two more tag along teens that felt we needed a guide to climb to the top of a hill to see a temple and go into a cave. Sigh….what can I do? As it turns out, the view was ok, but the caves were lame. We get in there and they tell me I have to put a dollar for each of us in a bowl to give to the monks. It’s not the dollar, because that’s nothing, but just the way they go about it that kind of bugs me sometimes. So then they ask if we want them to come with us into the cave, the are two etc etc, how much they give us is up to us etc etc. It is SO awkward! What am I going to do, send them away to their face. So we say ok. Anyway, maybe we have been spoiled with the absolutely amazing caves in Thailand, but these caves were puny. Total disappointment. But the walk was nice and it felt good to get out of the tuk tuk. The boys were funny and flirty just like the two at the last temple we went to on the day trip to Udong Hill from Phnom Penh, I think it is what they must be told to do to get a bigger tip. I gave them each a dollar when we were leaving. They want to know if we were angry with them. Not sure if that is the word choice they actually meant, but it made me smile. No I wasn’t angry, I just don’t like having to pay for a service I didn’t ask for then get shaken down for money all along the way. It’s not my style. Sawry!
We stopped at Secret Lake for lunch, reminds me of the lakeside restaurant we have been to in Chiang Mai where they have bamboo huts out into the water and depending on how high the lake is, it depends on how far into the water you are. Hmmmmmm–quite the adventure ordering. The menu was in English and Cambodian so we thought we knew what we were doing, all we wanted fried rice and another dish that said chicken with red chilies and basil. Sounds simple enough. After much much discussion between Bun Loung and the staff and Bun Loung and us, we get to the following, “no we don’t want a whole chicken, just a half, yes, just a half, and we want pork in our fried rice, yes pork, pork? Yes pork. And yes, just half a chicken. And pork with our fried rice. And yes only half a chicken” I bet you think I am exaggerating. I’m not….it went on for a good 4 minutes.
So the fried rice comes out! It was incredible! If this is any indicator, we are very excited about our “half chicken with basil and chilies”….but as is often the case we are surprised with what we actually get. So the dish comes about 10 or 12 minutes later, I guess it took them that long to chase the chicken around the yard or something, but either way, the initial presentation is pleasant. As I start to poke around, I am thinking oh darn, it’s on the bone still, not my favourite way to eat chicken as there are often shards of bone when you bite it as the bones split when they hack at with their knife. But I can deal with it. It will force me to slow down and enjoy the meal. The first bite I take out is ok, a little tough, still has the skin on, so now I have to be on alert for feathers (just kidding-maybe not-read on). Then the next piece I pull out is the freaking claw! Gross!! I go to great pains to avoid things like this in my daily life here, I need to see that the chicken I eat is either a wing, leg, thigh or breast. I don’t do claws or heads or other chicken parts. So I push that aside and take a much better look at everything on the plate. Troy is just staying back waiting for my assessment. What do I find but an organ, kidney or liver or something, whole too! All nice and roasted in the sauce. I’m really freaking out now. I found another claw….so then I was done. All I can think is, at the most there should have been one claw, this is only half a chicken! This adventure cost $10.25. I was so flustered I think I left her $1 tip. So I guess $11.25. They use USD and riel here simultaneously. The USD for dollars in a price and riel for the cents. So if something is $10.25 you can give them a ten plus 1000 riel. I have her a ten and a 5000 riel note as it was the smallest I had, so she tried to give me $1 back and I just wandered off dazed.
Troy fed the whole plate to the dogs that were hanging out under our bamboo hut, they were very happy with that, I finished my rice (I was still very happy with that) then I got in the hammock and relaxed in the breeze.
We got back to Kampot at 3pm and the tuk tuk driver wanted us to commit to another trip the next day….wouldn’t we like to go to Kep?? He said the weather would be nice for one more day, then rain was coming etc etc. After 6 hours in a tuk tuk, I was inclined to say I needed a break from that much fresh air. So we sent him along saying we would call if we needed him. He looked doubtful that we knew what we were doing….
We freshened up and then set off to try to find the Rusty Keyhole 2. Which we believed was also very good food. We took a detour through the Market. Oh goodness, I can’t take much more of these markets, where I have to see and smell all that meat and seafood and rotting scraps. When it is open air, it’s doable, but some of these markets are inside and the air just doesn’t move. Plus they go on forever! All this was so I could try and find banana chips, which I did not find. I am really starting to think I need to keep where my food comes from more mysterious (maybe even a total secret).
We did find the Rusty Keyhole 2. A pub style restaurant owned and run by a English chap and his Cambodian wife (I assume) His name is Kristian and the special was lasagna (Kristian’s lasagna) I sure was tempted, but we decided to get a pizza instead. SO GOOD! Oh my! Really really good. We were very happy. $13 for a large pizza, large water and a large plate of cheese fries! What a deal! On the way out we asked him about the original location. He said they were still open there, they just close every other Tuesday. Imagine our luck?? Well, now we know.
We thought about massage, but the only places we can find here for massage are done by blind people. So we aren’t sure about that….we passed for tonight.
