Cambodia, Part 2

February 13, 2019

Pnomh Penh, Kampot, Sivanoukville and the sea 🙂

We said goodbye (temporarily) to our friends and took a bus to the capital, Pnomh Penh. It’s a big metropolitan city, so there’s not much to find here for our tastes.

The biggest “attraction” that people come for is a visit to the infamous Killing Fields at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

A terrible genocide of local population took place in Cambodia during
the communist Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979. Around 1.7 million people were killed during these severe years. Its almost 1/4 of the total population of the country!

We decided to skip that heavy experience, but watched a documentary by the BBC on the matter instead.

We visited the Royal Palace and discovered that their king is a monk with italian – french roots. He likes to dance and has a master degree in art!

Alena washing herself in the fountain of youth. She doesn’t need it!

After Pnomh Penh we travelled onwards to Kampot and met with Paul & Julia again. We loved this small little town with its small center full of good restaurants. A guy called ‘Darren’ started talking to us and sold us on a group trip with his tuk-tuk to visit some villages, a cave, and the town of Kep near the sea.

The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!

The “Big Durian” in Kampot
big and small elephants!

Darren was mostly preoccupied with advertising his own services, his excellent JBL bluetooth boombox (that was definitely not fake), and the RGB LED lighting on the tuk-tuk. We had some lunch next to a “secret lake”:

The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!

Afterwards, Darren showed us the town of Kep, which used to be some huge high-roller French beach resort before the Khmer Rouge. Now it is full of abandoned buildings, but they are developing the area again.

In the evening, Darren took us to a local restaurant with a Karaoke stage. I think Alena’s face best describes the evening:

The day after, we felt like we needed a bit more autonomy, so we rented a scooter again to go up Bokor Hill, the site of an old French colonial casino from the 20’s. The casino itself has since then been torn down and replaced by a hotel, but there’s still a nice view over the surroundings and plenty of other abandoned buildings to explore.

Paul and Julia had a decent camera with them and the talent to use it! We’ll post a couple of their pictures in this article 🙂

The ride up the mountain was so much fun! Even better than the Hai Van pass in Vietnam. Smooth curves and a nice view to boot. Soon we hit the top:

The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!

We arrived at a huge water tower, which looked safe enough to climb. Time for a little adrenaline.

The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!

Of course we were wearing helmets 🙂
Complete trust in the Cambodian welding.

To finish off the day we did a quick stop at a waterfall:

The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!

The next day we woke up too early to go kayaking in what’s called the “Green Cathedral”. It was a bit too cold and it was a bit too early!

The picture below is a 360 photo, click and drag to look around, scroll to zoom!

We brought back the scooters and had one final meal in Kampot, before taking the bus to Sihanoukville . There, we were greeted with an impressive sunset. Julia & Paul went in full photoshoot mode! The next pictures are all by them, thanks guys! Warning: some of these pictures are too cute.

These are our own pictures

Sihanoukville was not our goal, we wanted to end up on the island of Koh Rong Samloem. We took the cheapest ferry, which brought us to Mpai Bai beach, apparently also the most quiet beach 🙂 This place was incredible, but unfortunately we had a bus booked to Bangkok two days later, so we couldn’t stay long…that was a heart breaking moment :(((((