I really love motorbikes. Whenever I take one I make excuses to my parents about how there wasn’t any other means of transportation that I could take but realistically, I do it because it’s one of my favourite ways of getting around. Some of my favourite memories from Montreal were days when Sean and I took out the Vespa and drove around the city. Definitely my favourite memories of Cambodia are from Mondulkiri and Kampong Cham, of getting hopelessly lost driving around the countryside for hours.
A couple of weekends ago I went to Kep for a second time, this time with a whole group of girls that I had just met.
It’s too bad that I’m only catching up on this blog now because that weekend finally reminded me of the feeling that brought me back to Cambodia in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been having fun here. I live in an awesome place, my job is exactly what I wanted it to be, and I have been doing really fun things. But what I hadn’t been able to recapture is that feeling of being completely in love with Cambodia the way I had been when I was leaving the first time around.
It happened a bit unexpectedly. On Thursday, my new friend Miti invited me to come with her friends to Kep on the weekend. I hesitated because I had gone just two weekends ago with Grace, but in the end I decided, why not? Even if I’m going to the same place, I have no other plans and I might as well get out of the city. Instead of leaving on the bus on Saturday morning, the 9 of us rented a share taxi. It was $20 there and back and the main benefit was that we got to go Friday night (late), and come back late on Sunday (7:00 pm, when the last bus usually leaves at 1:00). We were going to be staying at Tree-top guesthouse, right by Kep lodge, and not nearly as far out as Rega Kep (the place Grace and I stayed at, and which neither one of us liked). We got in late (after our driver spent 45 minutes within Kep trying to find our guesthouse). The employees were asleep because pretty much everyone in this country is in bed by 10 and groggily got out of bed to greet us. Greeting us involved giving us plates of fresh fruit, which was really nice because I hadn’t had time to have dinner that evening and I was starving by the time we got to Kep. Even at night Tree-Top was atmospheric: Wooden lanterns suspended in the air, wooden bungalows and actual treehouses if you’re interested. We weren’t awake long – we crashed maybe half an hour after getting in.
The next day we’d been planning to go to Rabbit Island but the guesthouse staff dissuaded us: ”no no! Not safe – water to big, you have to stay there if you go. Cannot come back.” Instead we rented motos and drove to Kampot, and from there to Bokor Mountain!
When Grace was here, this was the place that captured her attention most. On top of Bokor Mountain there is an abandoned Casino. Before the civil war the rich Phnom Penh elite, and the expat Chinese population used to come here to gamble and pass the time. Though, as an instance of poor planning the casino looks out over a cliff. Urban legends abound about people who lost all of their savings and committed suicide by jumping to their deaths at the conveniently located cliff just outside. Right now the building is a ghost of itslef – decrepit and abandoned.
I had really wanted to see it – much more than I wanted to see Rabbit Island and I was ecstatic that we were going. As well, the drive from Kep was really really nice – the road was wonderfully paved, a rarity in Cambodia and it was actually that drive that reminded me why I loved this country so much. Driving through the Cambodian countryside totally changes your mental landscape in terms of the colours and images that become available to you, and this was a particularly beautiful part of the country.
When we got to Bokor hill we were confronted with teh fact that the park had been closed to the public for about a year now because of construction. We had known this but had asked the guesthouse to call ahead an confirm that it was open that day because it was the Queen’s birthday. They had said that it was open.
Annoyed, but not too annoyed because this happens here all the time, we tried to pay the guards to let us in. We started at $20, went up to $50 and even to $100 at one point. No success. At this point we were frustrated and sort of shocked. Usually here when someone tells you that you can’t do something, they don’t mean that you can’t do it- they mean that they’d like you to pay them. But the guards were having none of it. Neither were we though – we had come to see the Casino, and personally, I wasn’t leaving without seeing it.
Eventually a man who spoke English was called (after the guards saw that we weren’t leaving) and explained that it was too dangerous for us to go up there (the guards all along had been miming something, which I now understood was supposed to be us falling off the mountain). However, if we were willing to pay a ranger $100 to take us up there, they’d let us in. Done and done. It came out to $20 each. Some of the girls hesitated but I was in full enablement mode: leave without seeing Bokor hill because of $20? NO. WAY. We climbed in the back of the pickup and off we were towards the top of the mountain.
It was awesome. I thought it would be cool but it seriously exceeded all expectations. I don’t want to upload each photo individually so here is the link to my Picasa album of the trip (it also includes some pictures of the next day, when we just hung around Kep). The only thing that I would have done differently is bring a sweater next time – it was FREEZING! The photos you see of us wearing plastic raincoats have nothing to do with the rain – it was just the only things we had that could give us some warmth
https://picasaweb.google.com/101330756159053123597/Kep2?authkey=Gv1sRgCOCp6bWfi9u-EQ
