Kampot: Abandoned buildings, pepper farm, kitesurfing, celebrating birthday and a lot of rubbish everywhere

We had a bit difficulties in deciding our second destination in Cambodia. We knew we would end in Siem Reap but where to go after Phnom Penh? We had received recommendations for the island of Koh Rong Samloem and we checked that out. It looked beautiful, no doubt about that. But we didn't find any accommodation that we wanted to go to in our price range... People were complaining a lot about generator noises, power cuts and other things. Had we not been on Gili Air earlier, we might have gone there to experience the island life for a while but we didn't feel the need at this point. We started googling and came across a river town, Kampot. It seemed that there could be some things to see and do, so we decided to go there. We left Phnom Penh in the middle of Khmer New Year (it lasts for 3 - 4 days), so there was very little traffic and our trip in a minibus took maybe 2,5 hours from Phnom Penh to Kampot. We arrived in Kampot and the first thing we saw was a gigantic durian fruit statue in the middle of a roundabout. Quite cool, actually!

We stayed in Kampot for six nights. Originally we had planned to stay five but then we would've used Edda's birthday for traveling and that didn't sound that fun. 😁 Edda had found some restaurants on TripAdvisor and one of them was Riki(tiki)tavi. It looks very nice and inviting from the outside, as you can see in the picture below. Kampot is known for its peppers and Rikitavi had a Kampot pepper burger that Markus had to try. It was very good. Rikitavi also had happy hour every day from 5 to 7pm and we tried their Kahlua ice coffees. They were delicious! And when you get two for 3,50 USD, it's even better!

Kampot pepper burger

The riverside of Kampot looks nice at night with different lights here and there. Their old bridge is the one that most probably catches your eye because it's all lit up. We even catched a nice video clip of the water moving and the lights dancing on it. 😊 The bridge is not coherent because it has been destroyed twice and then new parts have been added. 

One place Edda found was a vegetarian restaurant, Simple Things. We ended up going there maybe three or four times because everything was so good and their service was friendly. We especially loved their smoothies, that were full of flavor and some tastes we hadn't had before, such as dragon fruit - ginger smoothie. Yammy! There was also a cat (sometimes two), that was just hanging around on the benches. 😸

One has to take the shoes off when entering the restaurant 

'Let's call it breakfast' smoothie included at least coffee, cacao and peanuts. Highly recommended! 

A regular at the restaurant 

One doesn't need long to explore the city of Kampot. There is the riverside where all tourists wonder around and then the rest. We walked around a bit on one day to see how the city looks like. 

 This was the view from our hotel's balcony

Somehow we thought about Peru when we were walking on the streets of Kampot. We are not sure why. Maybe all the small shops, the dust and garbage...? There really is a lot of trash in Cambodia. And especially on the way from Phnom Penh to Kampot and in Kampot. That really got us quite depressed again. You remember, we had the same feeling in Dominican Republic? We will come back to this topic soon. But let's continue our walk in Kampot now. So, we were walking on the streets and decided to visit the market. Outside of the market was a terrible smell, because all trash was just piled in one place in front of the market. Yuck. We walked a bit on the market but it wasn't really pleasant - it was wet, dirty and it smelled bad. We didn't really feel like wanting to buy anything from there. 😕 We did see one funny moment though! There was a small boy that wanted to take a poo on the pedestrian road. (Apparently that's normal?) But he got interrupted by a huge cow that was walking freely on the street! The small boy didn't see that coming and ran away to continue his thing on the drive way. The entire event was just so absurd that we started to laugh!

Sugar cane, anyone? 

One of the main attractions in Kampot is Bokor hill and its abandoned buildins. There is for example an old church, a casino and other buildings. They look a bit creepy and spooky but are interesting. The link above says that the road would be in very bad shape, but that's not true. It must be old information, because the serpentine road is in very good condition. We rode a motorbike and it was easy. Only thing was that it was actually quite cold because every now and then we rode inside of a cloud! We would've been happy with long pants or at least a sweater! 

We managed to get some nice pictures but it wasn't that easy. The entire area was filled with trash! Locals like to go for picnic on the hill. Especially now when it was the end of Khmer New Year. But still, we haven't seen such anywhere before. Everything is left behind. Everything. So many plastic bottles and take-away boxes. Many of them are put into plastic bags but then the trouble seems to be picking that plastic bag up and taking it to a garbage can. Seriously. How difficult can it be? 😦 But we noticed that Khmer people don't see the trash as disturbing as we do. We saw many times a group having a picnic next to a highway (that seemed to be "the thing to do") and there was trash on the ground all around them but they still thought it was a nice spot for a picnic. 😨 

Old casino 

It would've been nice to get a picture of just the abandoned casino but they had put some flags, restaurant stalls and loud music in front of it... Why not just let the creepy buildings be creepy? 

Locals having picnic next to the abandoned buildings made it also challenging to take pictures. 

 Trash, trash, trash...

Then we decided to visit Popokvil waterfall because it was close by. We didn't spend many minutes there because the entire place was filled with locals eating on every single rock that was visible. This, even though there were signs every 10 meters that eating and drinking on the stones was prohibited. People have to pay an entrance ticket to the waterfall and we believe that no-one says to people having picnic that it's not allowed so that they would get more entrance payments. Just a guess. But yes, there is no-one that oversees that the waterfall would be clean and beautiful. We even saw people peeing in the waterfall from the upper level and there were people underneath taking pictures on the lower level. The water really wasn't clear - filled with food, drinks and pee, apparently.

On our way back we saw some more abandoned buildings so we stopped. Edda was depressed enough of the trash amount so she stayed at the parking spot while Markus went to take a few photos. While waiting, three local girls came and asked if they could take a photo with Edda. She hadn't experienced that before, so it was quite funny. 

There was also a huge statue of Lok Yeay Mao on the way, apparently around 29 meters high 

Then it was time to visit one of Kampot's pepper plantations. The probably most well known plantation is called La Plantation and it's a good 40 - 50 minute ride from Kampot. We had read that taking a tuk-tuk would not be a good idea because the road is not in the best condition and it would be a very bumpy ride. We had rented a scooter so we rode ourselves to the plantation. We met some people on the plantation that had taken a tuk-tuk and they did say it wasn't very pleasant... It wasn't the easiest with a scooter either because every here and there it was wet and slippery so we were a bit scared that the scooter would fall over but luckily it didn't!

It's good to have a buffy when it's so dusty

When we arrived to the plantation, we were showed the way to a restaurant/show room and we waited for a guide to become free. We toured together with a German family and another man. The tour itself was actually quite interesting. We learned that green and black pepper are from green pepper and that red and white pepper are from red pepper. Black pepper is just boiled and sun-dried, hence the black color. White pepper is red pepper but boiled for a longer time so that the skin becomes soft and then it's removed and you only have the white inside part left.

We got to walk between some pepper plants and tasted fresh green pepper. It was spicy but delicious. How lovely it would be to be able to eat that with all meals! All pepper vines (they grow on sticks from ground up) were covered with coconut leaves so that they wouldn't get too much sun light.

We also got to taste long pepper. It wasn't as tasty as the green pepper in our opinion.

Close to La Plantation there was a cave called 'Elephant cave temple'. We decided to pay a visit. On the way we got to see the real countryside and people working on the fields. The cave isn't that big but it's still possible to get lost in it because there is not a clear path that one should follow. When we came to the entrance there were two small children that offered to be our guides. We have learned that we should never give children any money in these countries because it encourages them to stay out of school. In this case we also said to the kids that we don't want them as our guides but that they should be in school instead. We asked one guy hanging around the ticket booth if he could be our guide and he said the child can be. We said we don't want that. He then agreed to be our guide. In the first part of the cave is a temple. We tried to ask our "guide" about it but he wasn't too interested in telling us about anything. He was rather arrogant and didn't care about anything.

Cave entrance 

Elephant 

Temple

Going down in the cave wasn't that easy.

Then became a day with wind. By now you should know what that means. 😉 It means that if nothing else is planned, we, or at least Markus, head to the beach. The wind was not very strong, but Markus managed to get some kiting done anyhow. He had been writing with Cambodia Kiteboarding about wind forecasts and they were very friendly and helpful. 

Markus kitesurfing

We went to buy water from a kiosk after kitesurf. There was the cutest little girl with her grandma or great grandma (we believe). Markus went to buy the water and Edda waited outside. The little girl came to Edda and started to first point at the kiting equipment on Edda's back. Then she pointed at Edda's helmet and went to get her cap and put it on. Now she also had a helmet! She was curious about Edda's sunglasses. Edda put them on her and she found it funny. The little girl then put her cap on Edda's knees and tried to take the sunglasses in return. She wanted to make a trade! Well, the trade didn't happen this time. 😉 Then the girl just sat on Edda's knees and stayed there. She was so cuuuuute!!

Every night there are many river boats that leave for a sunset cruise up the river. It costs 5 USD and includes a beer. We went for it after the first kitesurfing day but we got in a bit of a rush and ended up in a party boat... Oh my. We had hoped for a quiet cruise on the river but it got a bit disturbed by the loud music. But the views were nice! After just a short while we had greenery on both sides of the river. The sales pitch for the river cruises includes also that one would see fire flies. It started to feel a bit weird when we didn't see a single one before we turned to a side river (where every single boat stopped). There a member of the staff on the boat said to us "look, fire flies!". But this was before we could even see them. He just happened to know that we would soon see them, because the "fire flies" were in the same exact spot every single night. This was because they were Christmas lights!!! Yes, Christmas lights! 😲 When we noticed that the "fire flies" were not flying at all but blinking in one spot instead or "moving" up and down on the same spot all the time, we understood that these were not real. We don't know who believe that those were actual flies.

Then it was Edda's birthday! In our hotel there was not really a possibility to get anything extra, so no nice pictures from our room this time. But when we went for breakfast at Simple Things, the staff "somehow" knew that there was someone with a birthday in the room. 😉 They surprised Edda with a fruit salad and a birthday wish written in chocolate. So nice! Also the cat came to say hi! Edda ordered a very good breakfast with oatmeal, smoothie and a toast with peanut butter (all home made!).

When you get this much delicious peanut butter for one bread, the day starts extremely well! 

There was wind in forecast so we headed to the beach again. Edda started her birthday with helping Simone (a Dutch girl living in Cambodia) to clean the beach from all the trash left from local's picnics. But one big trash bag wasn't nearly enough! It's not every birthday you spend picking poop diapers from a beach... Really - there were many dirty diapers there!! 😠 Anyhow, we met some new people - a Danish couple and an Austrian couple and waited for the wind to pick up with them and Andreas - a Swedish kite instructor. It was nice to meet new people again! Then there came a bit of wind and Edda practiced again how to handle the kite. But the wind went down and the kite fell all the time so it wasn't that fun anymore. But then some people came to the beach and they had the cutest puppy with them!! It was running around and wanted to play with us. Oooh, so cute! 😍

In the evening we went for Edda's birthday dinner with Andreas, Stefan and Tina (the people we met on the beach). We went to Twenty Three, a restaurant recommended by Simone. It was a really nice place with good drinks and tasty food. We had a very pleasant dinner with new friends. 😊 Only bad was some cockroaches walking around on the floor... Luckily there was a cat that tried to catch them. One time it succeeded and then wanted to show Markus how talented it had been and dropped the cockroach on Markus' backpack! The cockroach was still alive so it ran away but we didn't see where so Markus emptied the backpack to be sure we didn't bring a souvenir to our room...