06.12 - Day 326 - Kampot, KHM

Friday 6th December - Kampot (Day 326)

I borrowed the owner William's bicycle for a mooch along the waterfront of Kampot, returning to our room at Magic Sponge with baguettes, peanut butter and mangoes, eaten by all under the vines providing shade at the front of the property. 

Once we get school work ticked off for the week we arrange through William a remorque driver - Mr Nak - to take us on the Countryside Tour. 

We’re not long on the road before joining a dirt track, bumping up and down as we follow a small stream, from which regular blue pipes reach up and over the top, attached to small generators to pump water into the rice fields. 

But that season is mostly complete with many houses having laid out sheets on which sits the picked rice drying in the sun, before it is sent off to be processed (of which most is sent to Vietnam). 

We stop abruptly and follow Mr Nak across a few fields, then ascending 200 stairs and down into Phnom Chhngok Cave which holds a 5th Century small, well preserved temple. Mr Nak shines a torch in the cave, which startles the bats and delights the kids. 

Onwards we rattle, grateful for the moving breeze to Brakak Koola Lake, also called Secret Lake (by tourists - though it’s huge so how its a secret I’m not sure) only stopping for a photo, then pressing on to La Plantation. 

This social enterprise - we learn on the free 40 minute tour - offers free accommodation for workers, subsidises the local school, pays for 3 students to attend the local private school each year. All this just from growing pepper, both peppercorn and long pepper, 30 tonnes a year of it. 

There’s tasting too after the informative walking tour through the vines, Sienna gamely trying each one to score on her worksheet in the large open plan shop. And who thought pepper was just pepper? 

Mr Nak drives us south; it’s noticeable on the dusty roads the numbers of kids waving at us, shouting ‘Hello’, down to the Crab Market outside Kep. 

Under low slung tarpaulins we weave between the stalls, many cooking skewers of fish, squid, prawns, but it is a heat trap so we instead eat at one of the many cafes, some tasty crab fried rice and BBQ fish. 

On the 30 minute drive back to Kampot we stop lastly at some of the salt fields - the salt generated by pumping sea water into small levied flat fields, letting evaporation run its course before manually raking up the salt. The season is just about to begin though we can spy a bank of salk in one of the many warehouses lining the edges of the fields. 

Back at base we rest in the aircon before strolling out, still slowly, to the local night market as well as buying several packs of Tiffy as we’re all under the weather with a cold.