Kampot/Kep, Cambodia: Rain, rain, go away!

It started raining every day after the day we were caught in the rain cycling back from Angkor Wat. Spent one whole day on the bus getting from Siem Reap to Kampot. Kampot was surprisingly quite packed with tourists, there was even a British rib house called Rusty Keyhole. We had dinner there and boy were the ribs good (a little too salty though). We caught the sunset near the beach and booked two tours with our hostel.

I have no photos of the first tour because it was raining extremely heavily so I didn't bring my camera along. The van went up a winding road around a mountain as the rain pelted down mercilessly on us. We saw some abandoned buildings which were not particularly attractive, especially when all I wanted was a hot tub to soak in.

We woke up to rain again the next day pff. This time we battled the rain in a tuktuk which was even less comfortable but an experience nonetheless. Our poor driver had to drive with the rain hitting his face. The first stop was a salt field but couldn't see the salt due to the rain. Thankfully the rain was a lot smaller now, so I managed to snap some (not very nice) photos (but still...).

We drove past some cattle ploughing the field and our driver stopped so we could take a photo. He must be like city people *eye roll*.

Then we trod through mud barefooted, crossed a makeshift log bridge (it was pretty shaky and my toes were gripping onto the log for fear of falling into the muddy river underneath) and reached a temple in a cave but it was more like a shrine or it's just an awfully small temple. Our driver pointed out some interesting rocks that were shaped like animals in the cave, there were crocodiles, pig and erm something else I can't recall.

And then before we left for Kep, we went to a Kampot pepper farm! Kampot is supposed to be famous for the pepper and I've never seen pepper plant before so it was quite interesting. The farm of course sells packed pepper but it was SO EXPENSIVE. I can't remember exactly how much it was but enough to make us gape.

Kep was small and it's not just me. It's the smallest province in Cambodia! Unfortunately due to the continuous rain, we didn't really experience Kep fully. We were supposed to take a ferry to Rabbit Island (which was included in our tour) but the ferry was cancelled due to bad weather. We also wanted to go to Kep National Park and enjoy nature but we were advised not to. So we just wandered around the market near the beach, watch the locals catch crabs, ate lots of seafood and chilled out at our backpackers (SEE BELOW).

This has to be the cutest backpackers I've ever been to! It was just adorable, like a mix of LOTR and The Flintstones.