Our taxi driver, Mr How, has been waiting for us for 4 hours as Will got the travel times mixed up, but we’re as glad to see him as he is to see us. We are literally in the middle of nowhere on a dusty, potholed road. The potholes often turned into craters and for the next 5 km, we lurched along at 5 kmph until we hit a tarmac road. We’re heading for the coastal town of Kep, which is 49 km away.
First stop, The Beach House (www.thebeachhousekep.com) with a great view out over the sea. We get chatting to a Dutch couple, Moira and Joost who are tripping around the world for 18 months and learn that Joos has just won $10,000 from a fruit machine in a casino along the coast, which is very handy as Kep is pretty much a one-horse town, without a bank or even a cash-machine.
Kep is on a small headland and the beach is a 1km long crescent of sand that was shipped in from nearby Sihanoukville over 30 years ago. There’s just one road that traces the coastline before doubling back on itself and electricity only made it here 2 months ago. Formerly a colonial retreat for the French elite, many beautiful villas were built here but little remains now except the concrete frames of the buildings, some still standing behind locked gates and some with families living in amongst the tangle of weeds taking over; no windows, doors or roof. After the French fled Cambodia in the 50’s, the villas were initially looted by the Khmer Rouge and then further stripped of every possible bit of wood, tile and plastic by locals selling materials to the Vietnamese in order to survive the 1979/80 famine. The constant sight of the houses serves as a poignant reminder of the devastation and destruction Cambodia suffered during the war.
We have to move hotels and we take Moira and Joost’s recommendation to go to Verandah Natural Resort (www.verandah-resort.com). A 15 minute walk up a steep road and set into the foothills of the Kep National Park, we find our wonderful 2 bed bungalow, reached across wooden bridges stretched between the trees. Behind us is a view of the jungled mountains and, in front, a fantastic view of the sea in the distance. The restaurant is the eating equivalent of an infinity pool with no beginning and no end, just a never-ending view across the trees. I’m so relaxed that I practically fall over. If you lived here too long, you’d be forced to take valium as uppers.
There’s not very much to Kep itself but there’s an awful lots of crabs. A whole bunch of women constantly wade in and out of the sea, pulling bamboo baskets behind them. Inside are an assortment of crabs, all sizes and various colours and people come and choose, either to take away and cook or to have cooked by one of the little shack restaurants that line the shore. Every restaurant here has crab as a staple of their menu and Will tries most varieties; in soup, in pepper and in chilli.
The official currency of Cambodia is the riel, but in fact, the US Dollar is more widely used and accepted with small change being given in riel notes (8,000 riel to £1). There’s also one bar in town, called, strangely enough, Riel that I recommend you visit if you like drinking pints of Ankor beer…for 75 cents a pop.
