Girl Talk: Seafood! See Food?

Leaving the Pearl of Indochina, we headed south to quieter destinations. After getting off the bus in what we thought was riverside Kampot, while looking at a tuktuk driver's map, we realized we were actually in ocean side Kep. We shrugged it off and decided to stay in the town of 4,000 inhabitants and three times that population in crab.

Our only activity in Kep was a mouthwatering visit to the Crab Market. This is not to be taken lightly. This was likely our best meal in SE Asia. The market consisted of a waterfront strip of thatched roof shacks with grills out front, selling a variety of fresh seafood including shark, eel, many fish and crab of course. The seafood, which goes for about $6USD/kilo, was so fresh that we watched women wading out to fishing boats in chest deep water and then selling the catch directly to the cooks. Our meal consisted of a squid (imagine a size 9 wide woman's foot), crab (in a ridiculously delicious black pepper sauce), stingray (tasty but you'll have to try it to know what it's like), a veggie noodle dish, rice and Angkor Beer. Now guess the total price of this five-star feast...... $12 USD!!!

The next morning we hightailed to Koh Tonsay (Rabbit Island) on a small boat, getting splashed the entire way. Supposedly this island looks like a Rabbit, but to us it mostly looked like Gilligan's Island. A few bungalows with primitive restaurants and one basic bar lined the beach facing westward granting us the best sunset we've seen on the trip. Our toilet consisted of a few rocks with no hole on the ground which we balanced on and peed between, any other necessities were left to the imagination. The rest of the island was basically uninhabited. Our only option was to swim, eat seafood, read on the beach, eat more seafood, drink or play Yahtzee on a raised bamboo thatched-roof plank. We did all of these things for 48 hours. At hour 36 Gabi got restless and started counting down the hours for the boat to pick us up. At this point we made our first visit to the 'bar'.

The next few days were spent in Kampot, a city of 33,000 renowned for it's early 20th century French colonial architecture along the river. We couldn't disagree more but it did serve as a nice base for exploring caves and pepper fields. In town Lisa got a one hour foot massage from a blind masseuse at Seeing Hands Massage and we visited the market and walked along the river. In the early morning we visited the Kampot Traditional Music School which is a dance and music training center for disabled children and living quarters for orphans. We watched as four proud eight and nine year olds performed traditional Apsara dancing to the strict counting and singing of their instructor. Their enthusiastic audience consisted of two; Lisa and Gabi. These girls were orphaned and live and train at the school.

Eight km in the direction of Kep we arrived at Phnom Chhnork as children chased after our tuktuk amongst rice paddies. The children immediately surrounded us clambering to be our guides and led us to the cave, while teaching us tricks with leaves and making us flower crowns. Our English speaking tuktuk driver guided us through the cave where we had an impromptu rock climbing session with no gear and in flipflops.

We noticed our tuktuk driver had a shirt on that said, "What's Hot In Kampot?" to which he answered "The two hunnies I'm lookin' at." Just kidding...he actually said, "Kampot Pepper." Just as it started to rain we visited a pepper farm, an export that Kampot is famous for. This is the first time we'd seen what a pepper plant looked like and our guide did a nice job of explaining the difference between black, yellow, white and red pepper. All of these come from the same plant, but depending on when they are harvested and how they are dried, the color and flavor will vary. The peppercorns were the best we'd ever tried and we enjoyed eating them plain and whole. This famous Kampot pepper is a staple condiment all over Cambodia.