Surprising pepper plantations
After a super social and wholesome week on Koh Rong Sanoloem, we moved onto the east side of Cambodia, starting with Kampot. Kampot was the last place I visited in 2020 before having to come home for the pandemic, so I was super excited to head back here under such different circumstances and the time to actually enjoy our visit.
We actually went back to the same hostel I stayed in before which was fun, but did all new things compared to before. Firstly we headed to La Plantation, a peppercorn farm. Not going to lie, I was pretty apprehensive about this.. a tour around a pepper farm. But inner gardener in me couldn't turn down the opportunity. We also booked to do a cooking class here.
After a very, very dusty scooter ride, we turned up at the most beautiful farm. The grounds were huge, with various gardens of fruit, vegetables and flowers. We started the day with our cooking class. We absolutely love doing these in every country. It was quite a different set up to the one we did in Chiang Mai, it was more of a group effort - sharing the cutting of all the veg, taking it in turns to prep the homemade coconuts milk, and cooking the three dishes in batch. We made a Fish Amok - traditional Cambodian curry, a creamy vegetable curry, and a mango salad - a little like a Thai papaya salad but not as spicy or sour.
After the class we did the tour of the farm, which was actually thoroughly enjoyable! We finished the tour with a peppercorn tasting sessions - who knew peppercorns could have such a variety of taste?! Some were sour, others spicy, while others had a very citrusy taste to it. To finish the tour, we got a free pot of peppercorn ice cream, again surprisingly delicious! We planned to buy a variety of their peppercorns but realised that wasn't really very practical, to carry round for another 5 months haha. Thankfully, we found out we could buy them online and have them shipped to the UK. So that'll be a purchase our return home.
Curious adventures through abandoned resorts
The following day we hopped back on our scooter and drove to a place called Bokor National Park. What an interesting, eerie and pretty dang fascinating place!
About an hours drive outside of Kampot, up the windy roads of the national park sits a complex of buildings. Many abandoned, many many more being built, and some seemingly unused but still functioning in theory! 95% of those builds are hotels...
In the 1920s French colonialists started building this remote settlement, starting with a Bokor Hill Station and a Catholic Church. Further hotel developments were made in the 1960s looking to turn this settlement into an altitude resort. For many reasons, including the rise of Khmer Rouge, and its remote location, this big dream resort failed, leaving many buildings empty and abandoned.
Interesting though, lots of money is now being pumped into this area by foreign investors to create further holiday homes, apartments and even shopping centers here. Its a super weird and interesting place, with quite a confusing and unclear history/future. A pretty cool day out though, exploring all these abandoned building! I did also spent about 5 hours trying to read up on Bokor Resorts and its history to try and unpick this crazy place more, but literally couldn't find anything!! So bizarre! Definitely recommend as a place to go explore if you're in Kampot though!
Fresh crab feasting
To wrap up our trip in Kampot, we caught a bus 40 minute's down the road to a coastal town called Kep. Kep is primarily known for its fishing markets, specifically crab too. Many people visit Kep, just to purchase fresh crab from the market, something we were super keen to do. Now, I've never eaten crab, not a fresh whole crab? I've had crab in things at restaurants but am clueless on how you'd order, cook or even eat a whole crab!! So, we did loaddddds of research into how to spot good crab, and specifically how to order crab in Kep, how much you should pay and how to get it cooked there for you!
It ended up being sooooo easy!! We walked through the market, looking at all the stalls (pretending like we knew what was a good stall or a bad stall 🤣) and stopped at one stall with a super friendly seller. He suggested 1kg of crab was good for two people, which we'd read online too. So, he picked out 4 stone crabs, which came to just under 1kg, and topped it up with a few giant prawns, and a whole squid, bringing it up to 1kg. We were all prepped the haggle the price, as everywhere said online they'd likely ask initially for double the actual cost. Online has recommended to pay between $7-10 for a 1kg of crab, and to our surprise, the guy on the stall came in with $8 for the kilo! Which we were MORE than happy with, so all our prep to haggle was wasted 🤣
He then said he'd cook it for us, for just $2. So we grabbed a seat, bought two cans of drink and two portions of steamed rice at the table for another $2 and waited for our feast. And boy was it a feast!! It was massive and absolutely delicious! We may have needed a demonstration on how to eat the crab, despite our research, but we soon got the hang of it! It was so tasty, cooked in a slightly spicy tomato sauce, and packed full of the Kampot Pepper we saw growing just two days before on the pepper plantation! It was an unreal experience, and only $12 (approx. £10.50) for this whole feast!
Learning about endangered animals
Next we has an incredible few nature days visiting Kratie to see the Irrawaddy dolphin's and Mondulkiri to observe rescue elephants living monitored in the wild.
There are approximately only 300 Irrawaddy fresh water dolphin's left in the world, classifying them as endangered species. And approximately 100 of those left live in a small stretch of the Cambodia and Laos parts of the Mekong. We chose to do a kayaking tour to visit these dolphins as to prevent disturbing them with boat engines. After a 8km kayak (and a realisation that me and Chris are shite at Kayaking), we came across a part of the river full of the dolphins. Just sitting there in silence watching these beautiful creatures was just magical.
In Mondulkiri, we made a visit to the Elephant Valley Project. A conservation and NGO that works to rescue and care for a small group of elephants who were once used for tourism or working. They work primarily with the local indigenous community to educate them on elephant welfare, to provide them with work, and to take in their captive elephants while compensating the families for the loss of income this might cause them. It was a really amazing experience, simply observing the elephants roaming the jungle at their own will, while their mahout just observes and monitored them. The jungle patch they live in is a site protected from deforestation under an agreement with local communities to ensure there is safe and nutritious land to roam.
I found the day super informative, interesting to hear about the reasoning of local families for wanting to keep an elephant captive, the impacts it can have on families to not have the income provided by an elephant, but how the project is dedicated to working closely with those families to support both the families and the better welfare of the elephants. I'm so glad we sunk so much time into researching a truly ethical observation only, sanctuary to go see these beauties and support an important cause.
We've definitely learnt over the last few weeks, that the more countryside and outdoors adventures are some of our favourite. We do love short city breaks, with more of the home comforts of stronger infrastructure, familiar food and coffee shops, more comfortable accommodations. Those trips exploring more rural, local life and nature is certainly more our thing.
Paying respect to Cambodias recent dark history
Our last Cambodia stop was Phnom Penh, Cambodias capital city, and the heart of much of Cambodias recent history. The history is complex, harrowing and too hard to fully explain in one blog post but I'll try and summarise below:
In 1975, as a response to the years of US bombing Cambodia as part of a tactic in the US' war with Vietnam, the rebel communist group Khmer Rouge overulled Cambodia. Initially promising Cambodian civilians safety and recovery from the US attacks, people willingly followed the ideologies of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime. An ideology to restore Cambodia back to its more traditional, basic way of life.
However, the regime quickly became something else, civilians forced out of their homes, and sent to work camps, those who were considered educated or involved in governmental matters previously we often immediately imprisoned or murdered. Families were separated, and children forced into military training. A national genocide was commited. In the four years Khmer Rounge controlled Cambodia, an estimated 2-3 million people were killed during the genocide, around 1/3rd of Cambodias population.
Throughout Cambodia there are sites that speak to the Khmer Rouge ruling of Cambodia, but Phnom Penh has two of the most notorious sites; Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum(often called S21), and Choeung Ek Genocidal Center(often called The Killing Field).
Prior to Khmer Rouge, Tuol Sleng was a secondary school, but when the regime began and all education was forbidden, the school was repurchased as a prison. Over 20,000 people were imprisoned and tourtured here across the 4 years, and only 12 people were known to survive imprisonment here, when Vietnam invaded Cambodia to overrule Khmer Rouge and this prison was discovered. The museum and audioguide is harrowing, distressing and gut wrenching. It describes what happened behind the walls of the school, why people were imprisoned here and also displays the photos Khmer Rouge took of all prisoners on arrival to S21. Rooms and rooms of victims faces. Its an incredibly hard visit, but a very important one.
After Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, we went to Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, the killing fields. After Khmer Rounge soilders were done with prisoners at S21, primarily after they'd been given a (false) confession from prisoners, prisoners were moved to the killing field Choeung Ek where they were murdered and left in mass graves. After the fall of Khmer Rouge, sites like these were discovered, escavated and recorded. Many now have a memorial site, displaying the discovered remains or victims, as a way of paying respect for the tourture these victims went rough.
Cambodias genocide is one many people do not know about, despite only coming to an end around 40 years ago. Although it's a really tough history to hear, I think it's really important and valuable for people to educate themselves on this recent tragedy. Particularly as we continue to see horrific genocides and slaughtering of civilians across the world today.
This wraps up our visit to Cambodia, and the penultimate blog post about our visit (like Thailand I'll do a food highlights post).
I absolutely love Cambodia. It's feels like a much more authentic, real experience. Thailand is so accustom to tourism its hard to get a real experience of their culture and communities, which isn't the same in Cambodia. Even the most touristy places, like Siem Reap, have a grat balance of local and authentic culture with tourism.
It's interesting that so many people either skip Cambodia or spend only a few days here visiting just Siem Reap and Phnom Penh. Due to being less touristy, I suppose there is less "sights to see", so people rush through the country. But actually I think it's a beautiful country to explore slowly, to step out of your comfort zone, and to take in the beauty of a country with complex, harrowing history but such a promising, and exciting future ahead of them.
I'm excited to hopefully one day return to Cambodia in years down the line, and see how its promising future how come to fruition.
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