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.
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