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!

Phnom Penh: Killing fields, rooftop pool, food and Khmer New Year

From Bali we continued to Cambodia. We flew through Kuala Lumpur and had to stay overnight at the airport. We had slept already many times at airports so we decided to take a room from an airport hotel that actually was inside the terminal. It was just a 30 sec walk from our arrival gate! 😁 Then one more flight and we were in Phnom Penh. We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel. The traffic was chaotic and it looked like the whole city is under construction. Our hotel, Aquarius Hotel, was very nice and it had a cool rooftop pool to relax in. They had even upgraded us a bit so we got a room with a balcony. 😉

Nice view from our pool

Bali, part 3: volcano hikes, toxic sulfur smoke, dolphins at sunrise and meeting up with friends

One night we were hoping to find something to help our sweet tooth. 😋 We drove around with our scooter and checked menus of different restaurants. One had a massive list of different types of cakes and we decided to give it a try. The restaurant is called Cafe Batu Jimbar. We ordered some chocolate mousse cheese cake and coconut pie (never seen that before) and both were so delicious! Edda couldn't stop thinking about the chocolate mousse cake for the next few days!

Then, all the sudden, it started to rain heavily. We were wondering whether if we would wait or go. Well, the rain might take a while so we decided to go. In the video below you can see that in just a short time the streets were covered in water! (sorry about the bad quality in the video)

New Year 1939, monsters, crazy traffic, stealing monkeys and more in Sanur-Bali

Then it was time to go to Sanur. We had heard about Ogoh-ogoh festival and Nyepi (the silent day). It was the Balinese New-Year and it was just after few days from our arrival to Sanur. That was going to be interesting.

One of the monsters we saw during Ogoh-ogoh festival

We had bought bus tickets to Sanur for just over 3€/person from the tourist info in Ubud. We were a bit early at the bus station so Edda got an brilliant idea, lets buy some ice cream while waiting! 😂 When our ride came, it was a bit of a surprise. There was no bus, but a jeep. Well, that suited us. It had a good ac and it's smaller than a bus so it gets easier through traffic. It took us about one hour from Ubud to Sanur. The "bus" ticket was only to the center of Sanur, even if the driver had to drive by our place to get to the next one. Well, it was not that expensive to get the driver drop us to our Villa, about 3€.