July 3rd, 2016
Sunday July 3rd-the flashbacks begin….
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…
