If we die, we die together

Finally made it to rural Cambodia. My first two stops in the country were in much more touristy areas, but I'm here now in Kampot (southern Cambodia). It's home to durian fruit and black pepper plantations. I think durian fruit is jack fruit in the States (not sure though), regardless the stuff stinks. I ate some the other day because I felt the need to at least try it, but my senses were overwhelmed with the rotten smell of it. Its actually not allowed in some of the nicer hotels around the area because it really does stink. But the black pepper here, although very strong, is delicious.

The town itself is quite small, takes about 10-15 minutes to walk around the entire thing but quite nice, for once I actually feel like I'm in Cambodia. School children running around, a smaller market in town, and there arén't restaurants and guesthouses everywhere, that is sure to change as they are building a deep-water port here and currently building 5 star resorts, which other tourists complained about but I think our guesthouse owner (British) is right when he says the country deserves it since it has essentially been raped by itself and others for the past 3 decades with all of the fighting that has happened here. My favorite part of being here are the daily boat races at sunset on the river. Granted the boats are longboats and cruise at about 3mph so its like watching paint dry, but there is an announcer and crowds of kids gather to wave at the "racers". It's a short race and I guess the keep points throughout the year and crown a winner at the end of the wet season when the river turns from fresh water to salt water as the ocean water comes back up it. The boat races add a nice hometown feel.

The reason tourist come here is for Bokor National Park and the Bokor Hill Station. Which I got to tour yesterday. The hill station is a former French resort with a casino, hotel, church, and a few other buildings. It was abandoned back in the 60s right before the Vietnam War and now is a ghost town of sorts. The drive up there is up a dirt road on a mountain. Good thing its only the start of the monsoon season so the mud on the road was only a few inches deep. I mean we only go stuck and had to be pushed out once so thats a good thing right? To get up there you ride in the back of a pickup truck on benches and it was pouring rain the entire way up. We got a little wet, and at elevation the temperature actually dropped a bit so it was chilly for once in SE Asia. Once on top the rain slowed and eventually stopped, thank god, one of the tour groups that came up actually went down without seeing anything because they were too cold....thankfully our group was amazing and we had a great time singing "Here comes the sun" and other tunes with the word sun in it....only one knew "sun, sun, mr golden sun, please shine down on me" so I had to teach them. It was a fun international sing around, we even tried it in French for a bit....that ended poorly.

The Hill Station was spooky, real spooky, like something out of a horror movie. The sun never came out despite our singing and the abandoned buildings were covered in a misty fog which only added to the effect. It was an amazing site though, the buildings were fading to orange due to the material used in construction and were being over run by moss and plants. You could look down long dark corridors to single side window where the line shined in to illuminate the mist that was all around and it looked like we were in a horror movie. This was the casino/hotel which had 38 rooms to explore. The church was somewhat boring on the inside but the outside of it had a very strange feel with its steeple and cross (Catholic church) barely visible in the fog. There was also a cliff up there, the most popular place to commit suicide back in the day apparently that had very strong gusts of wind blowing up. Leaning over the edge almost felt like flying because the wind was so strong.

After the Hill Station we trekked 2 hours through the jungle up there, where we saw a cobra, to a massive waterfall. It was the largest I'd ever seen, granted Í have only see a few proper waterfalls in my day so that may not be saying much, but I was really really impressed. It had 3 tiers, though only 2 were big, and dropped about 100 feet in total. There was a huge volume of water coming over which made the bottom of the falls be covered in mist. It was pretty cool if you ask me. On the way back we ate some berries off this bush, they were kind of like soft acorns that you had to peel the shell from before eating. All the tourists looked at each other before we ate them before our guide, Viet (amazing by the way, probably the best guide I've had for anything yet) ate his and said well at least if we die we die together...cheers Viet.

We survived the bumpy and muddy journey back to town for a slow boat cruise back into town as the sun was setting. All in all a great day. Cambodia has thus far been 3 for 3 with awesome stops, one more to go in Phnom Penh before New Zealand, how did that happen?