kampot has made me discover a side of cambodia that i'm loving.
yesterday was spent going to the mountain station of bokor; it was an organised tour which went horribly wrong (the first pick up truck broke on the way up, the second on the way down) but nonetheless turned out to be very nice. i met a few nice people and saw the amazing old hotel; it made me quite sad to see how it's ruined now, it must have been such a luxurious and beautiful place. now it's really like the set of a horror film: fog, walls crumbling down and water everywhere... i cannot even explain, it was sort of scary, in this beautiful and romantic way. if i believed in ghosts, i probably would have seen one there. :)
on the way back we had a small boat trip, on a cute orange boat with potted flowers, looking at the flattest water ever, trees and mountains whilst drinking beer (included in the price, not bad eh). the moment we set foot on the pavement though it started pouring down, and when we got back to the guesthouse we were all soaked - a cold shower never felt so good. i'm even getting used to cold showers...!
and then in the evening i ate and drank fresh lime juice and khmer whisky with coke whilst chatting to one english guy and a swiss/dutch couple who were indeed very nice. i'm being quite lucky this time around, meeting lots of wonderful people.
this morning i woke up to the sound of rain - reassuring in its noise but disappointing for its consequences... thankfully it stopped after a while so i was able to get a motorbike down to the pepper plantations - kampot pepper anyone? had no idea how pepper grew and it's quite cool really. took lots of pictures of it and ended up buying half a kilogram of pepper for my dad - more weight in my backpack. eurgh. after the plantations i headed to the coast to kep (once called kep-sur-mer by the french, who, in order to keep appearences, used to get sand shipped over from sihanoukville since the beach in kep is not actually that nice). it gave me the same feeling bokor did; so abandoned and left to decay, but somewhat beautiful. i took photos of the lady in white (the one who's waiting for her husband, who's actually her long lost brother, who drowned in the sea), the sea and vanna bungalows (one day i'll go stay there, because they are SO nice - you will see when i post pictures) and ate some delicious (albeit expensive) crab.
on my drives around i've also seen many other beautiful things; jungle, bright coloured flowers, paddy fields (have you ever seen the bright green stems of rice moving to the rhythm of the wind, almost flowing like waves?), children running after pigs, young men at the top of trees, monks dressed in all shades of orange and red, cows peacefully eating grass, children waving to me and screaming 'hello!' with huge smiles on their faces, durian plantations, and yes... the red earth. and i've been wondering: why is cambodian earth so red?