North to South for the last time!

From Koh Kong it was simply a case of backtracking to just below Sre Ambel before turning right to head down to Sihanoukville. Once we made that right turn we were back on that least favourite road National 4, on which we had left Phnom Penh. The GPS gave the distance of 233 km or about 140 miles, a nice easy day even on the little Honda. We called in at the river side café we’d been to a couple of times, to have breakfast before hitting the road in the relative cool of the morning air; I reckoned that if we had a good run we would be in Sihanoukville by lunch. After all we had seen most of the interesting bits on the way up, and with Allie now well happy with her seating arrangements, other than drinks we could just forge on.

And so it was that by mid-day we were entering the outskirts of the town. The traffic got heavier and the rural heaven gave way to urban mayhem. With the help of the GPS, I managed to bypass the town center and head straight down to the water front. I swung into a car park right on the beach and we enjoyed a cool, fresh coconut juice almost in the shadow of an enormous ocean liner. Staying with the waters edge we moved on along the coast, past huge casinos, hotels and restaurants, none of which seemed to be particularly busy. I must confess I’m finding the economy of Cambodia very baffling. New developments, large and small seem to be sprouting up like bamboo forests after the rains, whilst most of the existing complexes and guest houses appear to be running on or near empty, and remember this is supposed to be their busiest season. I really don’t know how most of the places that rely on tourists are surviving.

We tried several guest houses and a couple of hotel, where the prices ranged from $25 for rather scruffy little room at the back of a little guest house to $45 in a smart hotel. As we were planning on staying probably two or more nights I really didn’t want to be paying as much as $45 per night, so we moved further along, eventually settling on a
1^st floor motel room which I managed to knock a few dollars off to get for $22. It was also right opposite the beach which was lined with more restaurants and bars than even the hardest boozer could manage to get through in a month of Sundays… but again there were but a handful of people eating and drinking in them with row after row of empty tables and chairs. Enough I suspect to cater for every passenger on board the cruise liner we had seen over the other side of town and still have enough left over for passing trade!

We lunched on rice with lovely fresh seafood; it just has to be done when your sitting right by the beach and then took a tuc tuc tour around town for an hour in the roughest sounding tuc tuc I’ve been in yet. A couple of time we thought we’d have to get out and push it up the hills but somehow it coughed and spluttered through, dropping us back, close to our hotel wher we celebrated our successful return at the nearby ice cream parlour.Even though the place was almost empty, Sihanoukville simply wasn’t our kind of town. Imagine Blackpool in December but with sunshine and you’ll get something of the picture. But before we left we did enjoy the evening sat on the beach in very comfy chairs at one of the bars sipping G & Ts in the moonlight; all very romantic!

Next stop was scheduled to be Kampot, famous for it’s special pepper and then Kep, but not before we had ridden up to the former French Colonial hill station of Bokor. The road up was spectacular, by far the best in Cambodia in my opinion. Views, bends, jungle, a huge monument and the largest casino I’ve ever laid eyes on (and that includes Las Vegas!). All in all one of the strangest places I’ve ever visited. It’s as though some mad megalomaniac billionaire has bought one of Cambodia’s best National Parks and decided, without recourse to any market research, to build an monstrous great holiday and casino complex but then lost interest (or ran out of cash) before seeing it through. I wonder if Donald Trump has a hand in it somewhere! Seriously though, it has to be some sort of a scam as judging by what we have seen all over Cambodia, there is no way on earth that a place of such gigantic proportions can ever make enough money even to cover it’s running expenses, never mind the capitol costs. We also went to the well signposted waterfall, which had just a trickle running over it! Right next to it was another huge building, this time a restaurant. Other than the monks sat picnicking on the steps outside it too was deserted and locked up and looking as though it were ever so!

The ride back down the 3500ft mountain was, if it were possible, even better than the ride up. The bends were taken with “enthusiasm” and the heat gradually built up one more as we got back down to sea level. We road into Kampot and staright out the other side to Kep for reasons we will explain on our return !!! Strangely, in spite of Kampot’s fame for it’s pepper, we saw not a single field of it being grown. Hopefully we’ll have more luck with Kep’s crabs….At Kep I again  followed the coastline and we finished our day at a lovely little beachside complex of individual cabins, where we seem to be the only guests apart from an American who is here long term, having been in Cambodia for 17 years…It’s nice, but not that nice!!! We’ve booked for two nights and might just make it three its so nice, we’ll see how it goes!