Kampot

Tuesday 28th

We were due to leave Kep for Kampot at 11:30am, we waited on the side of the road for two hours!!! And still no bus came, well not our bus. We went up to the hotel to enquire, he made some phone calls and refunded our money. Great. We got a tuk-tuk to the main part of town where a travel agent was, we booked another company and were off to Kampot finally at 2:30pm. The Kep tuk-tuk drivers were very greedy, wanting $2 to literally go 1km down the road and would not go below $1. Put it this way, it's $4 for a four hour bus ride. The wait was further compounded by the fact that neither of us had eaten anything all day.

We arrived in Kampot within an hour and went to The Magic Sponge for our first night as they only had one night available. We put our stuff in our room and went searching for our next hotel. Our street was full of them but the first four we went to were fully booked!!!! Luckily we found one which wasn't, same price as the Sponge so it was fine. The Sponge had a mini golf course so we played two games as Kay beat me the first time and i could not let that stand lol. I won the second game, with a much better score than her winning score. By this stage we discovered my arms and neck were sunburnt. This was considering we were in partial shade waiting for the bus. I didn't wear sunsceen as i thought i would just be on the bus and wouldn't be waiting too long.

We went for a walk along the riverside for dinner and ate there.


Wednesday 29th

Very lazy day, we got up, went to our new guesthouse and watched t.v. We then had lunch, went to a massage by the blind place and got shiatshu massages ($4/hr), which was painful in some parts of my back but i didn't wake up sore the next day so it was ultimately fine.

Eventhough we didn't do much the time seems to fly when you've got cable t.v with lots of things on, we particularly watch national geographic and discovery channel. The movie channels are constantly repeating the same movies.



Thursday 30th

Today we went for a big walk around town, we decided not to get a motorbike or bikes, which in hindsight was silly. The map we had and the few streets surrounding our street made the whole place seem quite small, but it wasn't.

The plan was to cross the river and go to the zoo, we crossed the river and when we saw the next major point of the railway was ages away we decided to turn back. On the way back we went through the market, which was quite crappy. It was very cramped, the roof was so low in some parts that i had to duck my head and...it smelt. By this time we had been out and about for hours so we headed back.



All in all Kampot isn't worth visiting unless like us, you have the time. The guide describes it as a place "you come and feel, not do", but we already did that in Kep. The other main attraction is the nearby Bokor Hill station, but that was $22 for a tour there, which is very pricey considering what it involves - not that much. It turned out to be a good decision because on our way to Sianoukville the travelers sitting behind us were talking about it and they weren't saying anything good at all.