And there we are in Cambodia. We left Don Det and the 4000 islands in a small river boat up to the mainland where we hopped on a bus to Siem Reap, in Cambodia.

We had been warned about the “stamp fee” of $2 collected by the agents at the border. Not exactly legal, but tolerated by the authorities apparently! If you refuse to pay, they make you wait all day but eventually let you go. When we got to the border, it seems that no two people had the same treatment. We had to pay $2 per person to exit Laos, except for Leo, because even corrupt officers have their morality! Then we paid $1 for the 3 of us to the “doctor” who checked our temperature (it was 40 degrees outside, I’m not sure what she measured!), then the stamp to enter Cambodia was free for us. Other travellers in our group had to pay everywhere and for each person. So I guess Leo and maybe our Indian origin played in our favour! The rest of the trip went smoothly bumpily! It was a bumpy dirt road most of the way from the border to Siem Reap. All together it was about 11 hours from Don Det to Siem Reap.

The biggest news item about Cambodia, is that Rita will be joining us in Phnom Penh 🎉 Therefore, we’ll skip Angkor Vat for now and return to Siem Reap with her in a few days. But we still spent 2 nights in Siem Reap, to get some rest and explore a bit of the town before the next night bus to Kampot, in the south.

It’s the first time I see a country where they juggle constantly with two different currencies: you pay in USD and they give you change in Rhiels.

Cambodia beer -and a few other brands- have a fidelity program here: when you open a can, you may get the next beer free, or sometimes even win a few bucks. As I was walking back to the guesthouse, I decided to give it a try. I stopped at a shop to buy a beer, but they had none cold, so they sent me to the neighbour. There I find a cold can, pay 2500 rhiels and open it. The capsule say something, so I show it to the vendor. She reads, gets her glasses, reads again. I had just won 50000 rhiels! Beginner’s luck 🍀 My first beer in Cambodia cost me minus $10!

We won’t spend a lot if time in Cambodia so instead of stopping everywhere and living in the bus, we limited our visits to a few places: Kampot, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap / Angkor Vat, and maybe something on the way to Thailand.

We would have totally skipped Phnom Penh if it wasn’t for Rita, but the genocide museum is said to be interesting so we may try that (sorry Leo!)

Kampot is small laid back town in the south, between Sihanoukville and Kep. It is surrounded by the Bokor mountain and national park on one side, pepper plantations on the other and the ocean a few kilometres to the south.

There are a few waterfalls in the region, so the first thing we did of course was to rent a bike and go check them out. We tried going to the Ov Mal Veal Pouch waterfall, it was quite epic. The « road » to get there was a skinny band of concrete, barely wider than the width of my tires, mostly broken, climbing straight uphill. It was like riding on a tight rope (with holes in the rope!). It took us 2 hours to climb up. Leo and Mary often had to get off the bike when the road was too broken. We had almost reached the waterfall when some guys coming down told us it was completely dry! I found the route beautiful and rather amusing (although very difficult) but it was super hot and Mary and Leo were so mad at me for taking them there that we just gave up 500m before reaching, and turned around. The way down was just as hard but Leo was filming the road this time, so he had some fun. No waterfall for us, we just rode back to town and jumped in the Kampong river to freshen up and watch the sunset.

The next day we rode our bike up the Bokor mountain. We saw a lot of monkeys on the side of winding roads (would be a feast for the Woaronis as Mary said!), but the top of the mountain has been recently bought by the Chinese to build condos and casinos. They have been pouring concrete and completely disfigured the mountain, and apparently noone is even buying it.

Bokor also has a big waterfall site, the Popokvil. This one also was impressively dry. From the wide cliff, only a tiny stream of water was falling through a hole. But it was enough for us to take a very refreshing shower 🚿

Next we went visiting the pepper plantations. La Plantation is a popular one to visit. Rather recent, it’s actually a social project created in 2013 by a Belgian couple. The plantation provides work, income and school for the local community. It produces high quality pepper with the Fair Trade label. After the visit we tasted some delicious pepper flavoured ice creams 😋

On the way back, a part of the dirt road had been made wet by some truck and become very muddy. I slowed down but I didn’t realize how slippery the mud was until I lost control of the bike and we slipped in the mud! Mary was ejected from her seat but Leo was held in front between my arms and legs. Luckily the mud was soft and smooth, so noone got hurt; we were covered in mud but barely scratched. The bike was fine too and we rode back home safely.

On our last day in Kampot, we rented a Kayak on the river and went swimming on some hidden river beaches. Leo wanted to play in the waterpark, but they refused my $20 note because it had a tiny stain of ink in the corner. Apparently the banks here refuse to take stained or damaged USD notes.

We are now on our way to Phnom Penh, we’ll meet Rita in a couple of hours.