I am home. My body is likely having a fairly violent reaction to the thirty two hours I just spent traveling, the fourteen-hour time difference, and moving from a sweltering ninety degrees at the heat of the day down to twenty seven. But it is also surely good to be home. And what a home to return to Boulder is.
Thank you all for reading. It has been a joy to share my experiences with you.
Friday, January 9, 2015
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Return to Saigon
These last couple days have not been very eventful, mostly occupied by buses, eating, shopping for gifts, and sitting around the hostel drinking and chatting with other travelers. But they've been good.
I'm torn seeing all the things I'll miss about traveling and thinking of all the joys of home that I'm looking forward to.
When this posts I should be seated on a plane about to start the 32-hour trip home. I leave just after midnight Saigon-time and arrive at six in the evening on the same day by the clocks in Boulder.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Bokor Hill Station and Phnom Chhnork
The following day was another day of motorbike touring, this time to Bokor National Park and Phnom Chhnork.
Bokor National Park is a 1581 square kilometer park just outside of Kampot. It is home to a number of threatened species including leopard, Indian elephant, Asiatic black bear, Malayan sun bear, pileated gibbon, pig-tailed macaque, slow loris and pangolin. It is in the hills, so the climate at the top is much cooler. For this reason, it is also home to a former French hill station. They were always looking for somewhere to escape the heat (honestly I can't imagine what it's like here during the hotter seasons).
The drive up was fun--a fairly empty winding road through the jungle with frequent overlooks to stop at. Though we did both come very close to running out of gas. The gas mileage on these bikes is good, but mine only had a two liter tank. Fortunately we found someone at the top with a few bottles of gas for sale.
This is the Catholic church from the old hill station:
These days there's a huge ugly casino up top as well. National Parks in Cambodia seem to be run like our parks used to be--all sorts of ridiculous bells and whistles like golf courses, casinos, etc.
After Bokor NP we headed off to try again to find Phnom Chhnork, a cave full of shrines. We'd looked on a map the day before and I had marked the turn off, but I could not for the life of me find it. We again had this problem. But this time we had a couple of new, very vague maps. So, we set off into the countryside knowing at least one of the turns we needed to make (though nothing is named or marked) and with a mild sense of the general direction that we needed to travel.
There was a great deal of dodging potholes, but we managed to not make any wrong turns, and finally found it with the help of two young girls. The cave itself was not terribly impressive, but it was interesting. There is a passage through from the top to the bottom, which we decided to attempt to figure out on our own using only our cell phones as flashlights. Before we started one of the young girls said to us, "Go without a guide and you will lose the way."
She was correct. We lost the way immediately and ended up back in the same chamber. The second time through we ended up with two guides. A boy of about six and a similarly aged monk followed us in and whenever we went the wrong way would just shout, "No!" at us. There is no way we would've found our way through without them.
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Kampot and Kep
Kampot is fantastic. A highlight city for both Emily and me.
Our second day in Kampot started with an incredible breakfast at an expat-run coffeeshop here. There seems to be a large expat community here despite the relatively small size of the town.
After breakfast we rented motorbikes (Emily has requested that should her mother read this, she replace all subsequent uses of the word motorbike with bicycle). This was my first time piloting a motorbike and I fell within the first sixty seconds. Scraped my foot a little bit and then got going. The rest of the day was without incident. I did however have to ride the pink motorbike with the Garfield floor mat. Emily was quite adamant about not riding that one. I think the locals got a kick out of it.
Motorbikes are definitely the way to see SE Asia--I should've done this sooner. It helps that here the roads are pretty good and the traffic is light, but you just see so much more. Our first stop was a local pepper farm.
Kampot is world renowned for its pepper. I've heard it said that it is required for a Michelin rating. It is also soon to receive a locality-specific appellation rule, such that Kampot pepper can only be produced here, as champagne can only be produced in Champagne.
The farm was nice. We stopped into the restaurant for a cocktail containing some of their pepper. Emily had a bloody mary, I had a dalmatian (a greyhound with pepper). They were both quite good. Initially the bartender didn't know how to make a bloody mary, so the owner of the farm/resort had to do it. Fortunately, he was sitting just a couple tables away. Both of the drinks were great, but he insisted that when we were in Phnom Penh we stop into the restaurant of a friend of his (also seated at that table) for the best bloody mary in the world.
We wandered the farm on our motorbikes for a while and then headed to Kep. Kep is a much smaller town than Kampot, and seems to be pretty low on the tourist list. There's no center to the town and it seems there are only a few things to see there. Our first stop was probably the best of these, the crab market.
We sat down at a delightful little restaurant right on the water and had a late lunch of crab cooked with fresh green peppercorns and fish grilled with lemon. The crab was incredible. We're considering driving back for dinner tonight.
The next thing to see in town are the decaying French villas that occupy a large area on the hill. Each property has a wall around it, and some of them are in the process of being rebuilt, but the majority look something like the one we popped into for a minute--a terribly decayed remnant of a structure overgrown with thick vegetation.
There's a National Park in Kep, but we didn't have enough time to visit before sundown, and there's also a beach, but we've seen enough beaches lately.
Our second day in Kampot started with an incredible breakfast at an expat-run coffeeshop here. There seems to be a large expat community here despite the relatively small size of the town.
After breakfast we rented motorbikes (Emily has requested that should her mother read this, she replace all subsequent uses of the word motorbike with bicycle). This was my first time piloting a motorbike and I fell within the first sixty seconds. Scraped my foot a little bit and then got going. The rest of the day was without incident. I did however have to ride the pink motorbike with the Garfield floor mat. Emily was quite adamant about not riding that one. I think the locals got a kick out of it.
Motorbikes are definitely the way to see SE Asia--I should've done this sooner. It helps that here the roads are pretty good and the traffic is light, but you just see so much more. Our first stop was a local pepper farm.
Kampot is world renowned for its pepper. I've heard it said that it is required for a Michelin rating. It is also soon to receive a locality-specific appellation rule, such that Kampot pepper can only be produced here, as champagne can only be produced in Champagne.
The farm was nice. We stopped into the restaurant for a cocktail containing some of their pepper. Emily had a bloody mary, I had a dalmatian (a greyhound with pepper). They were both quite good. Initially the bartender didn't know how to make a bloody mary, so the owner of the farm/resort had to do it. Fortunately, he was sitting just a couple tables away. Both of the drinks were great, but he insisted that when we were in Phnom Penh we stop into the restaurant of a friend of his (also seated at that table) for the best bloody mary in the world.
We wandered the farm on our motorbikes for a while and then headed to Kep. Kep is a much smaller town than Kampot, and seems to be pretty low on the tourist list. There's no center to the town and it seems there are only a few things to see there. Our first stop was probably the best of these, the crab market.
We sat down at a delightful little restaurant right on the water and had a late lunch of crab cooked with fresh green peppercorns and fish grilled with lemon. The crab was incredible. We're considering driving back for dinner tonight.
The next thing to see in town are the decaying French villas that occupy a large area on the hill. Each property has a wall around it, and some of them are in the process of being rebuilt, but the majority look something like the one we popped into for a minute--a terribly decayed remnant of a structure overgrown with thick vegetation.
There's a National Park in Kep, but we didn't have enough time to visit before sundown, and there's also a beach, but we've seen enough beaches lately.
Monday, January 5, 2015
First Night in Kampot
I was feeling a little bit frustrated with Cambodia on our second pass through Sihanoukville. Sihanoukville is a very touristy beach town that is also the portal to Koh Rong and Koh Rong Sanloem. It was starting to seem like I just didn't like Cambodia all that much. But then we took a bus to Kampot.
It was similar to arriving in Da Lat. This town has a fair amount of tourism, so there is plenty to do, but it is so much more relaxed. People are not trying to take my money nearly as much, they're friendlier, and everything is also a bit cheaper.
We arrived without a place to stay, but the English woman we were crammed up against in the minivan had been here before and had some ideas. A surprising number of guesthouses were fully booked, but we ended up finding a place that I really like. It is run by an Italian couple that were unhappy with their lives back home and took a year to travel the world and find a place to settle. They picked Kampot and opened a guesthouse and restaurant. They have some adorable children, the first good wine I've had in SE Asia (handpicked by the owner's grandfather back home), and a really excellent restaurant.
The first event of the night was a river cruise. For $5, you got a beer, soda, or coconut, and a three hour sunset cruise. They took us upriver under one of the most incredible sunsets I've ever seen until dark, then turned around and showed us some interesting natural phenomena on the way back. There were trees full of fireflies and hordes of tiny fish that would jump whenever the Khmer guide shined his light on the water.
Both of us are under the weather right now, so we came back, had a delightful Italian meal on the balcony just outside our room, and made it an early night.
It was similar to arriving in Da Lat. This town has a fair amount of tourism, so there is plenty to do, but it is so much more relaxed. People are not trying to take my money nearly as much, they're friendlier, and everything is also a bit cheaper.
We arrived without a place to stay, but the English woman we were crammed up against in the minivan had been here before and had some ideas. A surprising number of guesthouses were fully booked, but we ended up finding a place that I really like. It is run by an Italian couple that were unhappy with their lives back home and took a year to travel the world and find a place to settle. They picked Kampot and opened a guesthouse and restaurant. They have some adorable children, the first good wine I've had in SE Asia (handpicked by the owner's grandfather back home), and a really excellent restaurant.
The first event of the night was a river cruise. For $5, you got a beer, soda, or coconut, and a three hour sunset cruise. They took us upriver under one of the most incredible sunsets I've ever seen until dark, then turned around and showed us some interesting natural phenomena on the way back. There were trees full of fireflies and hordes of tiny fish that would jump whenever the Khmer guide shined his light on the water.
Both of us are under the weather right now, so we came back, had a delightful Italian meal on the balcony just outside our room, and made it an early night.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Koh Rong Sanloem Part 2
Koh Rong Sanloem was gorgeous. There are two islands in the area, Koh Rong and Koh Rong Sanloem. Neither of them have much internet, so bookings can be tricky. I'd gotten in the habit of just showing up to a place and finding somewhere to stay, but it's not so easy here. We'd just heard a story about someone getting stuck without anywhere, and you can't necessarily catch a ferry back to the mainland the same day you arrived. So, myself, Emily, and two Kiwi girls booked a bungalow on Koh Rong Sanloem, the quieter of the two islands.
Saracen Bay, where we were located was only about 1.5 miles long, so despite our being on the end away from the majority of the other resorts, it was just a pleasant moonlit stroll down the beach to find someplace else for dinner or a drink.
This is one of my favorite pictures of the trip so far. A couple of Swedish ladies who were staying right next to us rolling their suitcases down the sand when we got off the ferry:
Saturday, January 3, 2015
New Year's on Koh Rong
New Year's Eve was a very long day for me. I woke up at 08:00 and decided to go for a long run. Given the size of the beach, I had to do a couple of laps. But then I went for a swim and ate a giant breakfast with this guy:
Our side of the island didn't have much to look at while snorkeling, but Lazy Beach resort on the far side of the island had a bit, and was only a 1.5 km hike through the jungle. It was hard to get myself to put my camera in the water the first time, and I clearly need some practice shooting underwater, but it was pretty novel.
Koh Rong Sanloem is much quieter than the other island. We'd gone out the night before New Year's looking for someplace to have a drink and came up pretty short. But we were able to fund one place with a bit of life. While we were eating dinner we were approached by an English woman named Sarah who was trying to find interested folks to book a boat over to the other island for New Year's Eve.
The plan was to leave around 17:00, party all night, and come back at about 06:30 the following morning. We got off a bit late. This is what the boat looked like on the way there:
And this is what it looked like the following morning:
Koh Rong was a hell of a party. I didn't make it back to my bungalow until about 10:30. And then barely made it out of bed for the next 22 hours.
Our side of the island didn't have much to look at while snorkeling, but Lazy Beach resort on the far side of the island had a bit, and was only a 1.5 km hike through the jungle. It was hard to get myself to put my camera in the water the first time, and I clearly need some practice shooting underwater, but it was pretty novel.
Koh Rong Sanloem is much quieter than the other island. We'd gone out the night before New Year's looking for someplace to have a drink and came up pretty short. But we were able to fund one place with a bit of life. While we were eating dinner we were approached by an English woman named Sarah who was trying to find interested folks to book a boat over to the other island for New Year's Eve.
The plan was to leave around 17:00, party all night, and come back at about 06:30 the following morning. We got off a bit late. This is what the boat looked like on the way there:
And this is what it looked like the following morning:
Koh Rong was a hell of a party. I didn't make it back to my bungalow until about 10:30. And then barely made it out of bed for the next 22 hours.
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