I travelled with Liz to Kampot by share minibus (four to three seats,
about 26 overall in a 15 seater) where we spent a night in an
unexciting but nice guesthouse. Oh yeh - the colour scheme in our
room was nice - fleecy deep purple bedcovers with satiny cerise pink
pillowcases and vibrant yellow towels folded on the end of the bed.
Nice. Kampot was a small town that has a regular but not too huge
tourist trade. Most tourists who pass through here are heading to
Bokor National park for either a day trip or an overnight. We were
offered this trip several times. It was a nice
place to wander and the river side road while different, was
reminiscent of Kratie. We had an Angkor beer in the one restautant
we could find across from the river and watched the blue river (not
brown like I have got used to seeing rivers) and the delicate but
stunning sunset that sank behind the blue horizon of the hills in the
National Park. This is quite a change for Cambodia where for t
he most part the landscape is unrelentingly flat and now well into
the dry season also evry arid. Brown dust is prevalent, not just
along the unsealed roads. The few fields that are irrigated and
planted with vibrant green rice or other vegetables stand out like an
oasis in the desert.

Kampot has a small busy market but we didn't really explore for long
as we wandered along relatively wide red dirt roads where simple but
nice houses lined the sides and a couple kids played with string and
rubber inner tubes and other wonderful creative toys. Back to the
river and then to our taxi which we had managed to get for $5 to Kep.
The town is only 25 km and half an hour away but there appear to be
no regular buses and the moto riders and taxi drivers have a monopoly
on the route. $5 was very good as the average on offer was $10 which
was just completely ridiculous. But it was a pleasant drive out
there. The roadside seemed like one long horizontal picture
interjected with vertical images...palm trees, poles, a house, a
bicycle with a lady cycling, a white cow some water buffalo....and
still the flat sealed road went on through the flat brown fields. We
arrived at our guesthouse and they had a room, upstairs with a
balcony. The place was about 3km before the '
town' though we never quite made it there and what we saw were a few
houses. A Norwegian man staying at our place said he had looked
around with his moto rider and there wasn't really a town, there were
not really any shops to speak of, no bank and the post office looked
as if it hadn't been used in about 20 years. Probably true. All
along the road there are burnt out homes that were part of the
colonial history of Kep where the rich used to come down to enjoy the
seaside. Apparently it was during the Khmer Rouge that the place was
destroyed, though whether the elite used it themselves, it was
symbolically destroyed or it was just looted by impoverished and
desperate locals during the famine under the Khmer Rouge in the late
70s is not completely certain. The guide book suggests that a
combination of factors is the most reasonable assumption.

Our 'Seaside Guesthouse' was literally by the sea. There was no
beach to speak of but the sea came up near the wall by the edge of
the guest house where there were about 5 thatched wooden platforms
where hammocks were strung. What a great place to chill out. We
stayed 2 nights but could easily have stayed longer! I had bought a
hammock in Phnom Penh so enjoyed getting the opportunity to use it
there! I also learnt a good way to tie it up. We went out to an
island the second day and I strung up my hammock between two palm
trees and relaxed! Very nice.

We got a taxi to Kampot and stayed in the same taxi as it became a
share taxi all the way to Sihanoukville. The drive was fine and we
ended up with only four in the car so it was really quite
comfortable! Though travelling in Cambodia is always a sticky
business! We arrived in Sihanoukville to find it heaving with
tourists - mostly Cambodians. We thought it was because it was the
weekend, but later found out that it was also 'International Women's
Day' so we were too overwhelmed with the numbers of people to try and
look for anywhere at the nice beach we wanted to stay at and instead
opted for heading up to the budget enclave at Victory Beach. It was
fine - but late that evening I got antsy and decided that if I could
get a ticket I would leave the next day to head to Thailand. I wasn't
in the mood for a beach day and would just be puttin gin time to get
to Thailand and sort out my massage and diving courses. So I got up
the next morning, arranged a ticket and left for
the boat at 11am after a short walk to the beach and a nice
breakfast with a very good mango shake - lots of good mango in it!
Liz decided that she would leave too and got a bus to Phnom Penh.

So I got the boat at 12 which took about 4 hours to get to the
border. A barrage of moto drivers and pick up drivers stand by the
pier and wait for custom. All at once just before the boat touches
the pier they all start shouting and jump on the boat and try to get
you to go with them. It was so absurd we started laughing! In the
end I got a pickup for 20 baht which I think turned out to be the
cheapest offer around. Not bad. I had met Arjon on the boat, a guy
from the crowd at Siem Reap. We joined 8 others in a nice minibus
just over the border that drove us all the way to Bangkok. Very
easy. We arrived about 10.30/11.00pm. We got a four person room to
share and headed out to KhaoSan road to get some Pad Thai (noodles).
I had missed them! It was funny and yet also very familiar to be
back in Bangkok. I did need to scroll back through a few languages
to find 'thankyou' though and it is taking a little time to readjust
to traffic driving on the left.