Kampot

Time for catch up. . . from two weekends ago.  Took a 3-hour bus trip that turned into a 6-hour bus trip (a lot of traffic and a LOT of pee stops for the weak-sphinctered bus populace) to a town called Kampot down near the coast.  Was put in the last row of the bus with 4 Cambodians who spoke a little bit of English and wanted to talk the whole way.  The were pretty entertaining, especially when the old guy sitting next to me decided that he’d rather pee into a little black plastic bag than have the bus stop and pull over.  I don’t think he was too successful, however, because about 30 minutes later, he had the bus stop so he could go outside.  Not sure what happened to the plastic bag. 

the bus stop. . . my bus is 3rd from the right

Saturday afternoon I travelled via tuktuk to two cave temples (Phnom Chhnok being much nicer than Phnom Sorsia) in which Buddhist monks had built brick temples in the 7^th century AD.  They were in remarkably good condition.  I had tons and tons of kids as tour guides—they all want to talk, and I probably waved and said ‘hello’ to about a hundred people as the tuktuk ambled down dirt roads out to the temples.  

on the way to Phnom Chhnok

more scenery

from the hill of Phnom Sorsia

Phnom Chhnok temple

my tour guides and the temple

with my tour guides

along the river in Kampot

Sunday I was going to go up to an old abandoned French hill station (Bokor) but the road up was closed for construction and the hike up takes 6-hours and requires an overnight stay that I didn’t have time for, so I just borrowed a bike and went on a three hour bike ride in the countryside—again, a lot more hellos. . .  then took a shared taxi (a toyota corolla with 5 other passengers—would have been 6  but I paid two fares so I could have the front seat to myself!!).  The driver actually shared his seat with a passenger.

taxi driver talking on his cell phone with a guy sitting to his left sharing his seat. . .

But it was only a 2.5 hour drive, rather than the 6 hour drive, and for only 6 bucks more it was worth it.  Was dropped off at a market in some part of Phnom Penh that I don’t know, so I walked around there for a while, bought some weird fruits, ate some coconut covered grilled bananas, took a moto-taxi back to my hotel, washed my feet and legs off, went for a run amongst thousands of people out for a Sunday night cruise on their motos and about a hundred-fifty dancing the Macarena in a public square !?!   Turns out it’s a quite a common sight, both on weekend nights and early on weekday mornings.  It’s done mostly as exercise.