Day 50 – Kep and it’s Crabs

Off to Kep this morning.

A small sea-side town famous for its crab.

Booked a tuk-tuk because the distance isn’t far.

Didn’t count on the state of the road however!

Once we get to Casa Kep, Kate, our host,  shows us around and we get comfy in our first floor apartment.

We have hammocks on a large balcony!

Rustic, with a dog, cats, chickens and gekos, and home for the next 4 nights.

Experiences can often be about timing and for Kep we made a couple of mistakes!

No1 – As we are 5 mins from beach, we walk down to find a million Cambodian tourists!

Fri – Sun Kep is equivalent to Skegness high season!

Oh no. People watching it is, as too busy, noisy and filled with litter.

We walk the beach-front and find a nice cafe for a smoothie and meet a couple – one Geordie and his Chinese partner.

Nice to chat to others for a change, Fish (her nickname) is lovely.

He is the usual Brit.

In the evening we walk to the Crab Market.

It’s also mayhem at the market, but the restaurants are for tourists and aren’t that busy. Phew.

Pete has the famous Kep Crab. Delicious!

My fish is wonderful, plus I have a wine again. ????

Pete gets a beer ring-pull with a 6 on it, it means free beer. ????

Apparently you can win beer by buying beer! Result!

Mistake No2 – Back at Casa Kep we sit up for a bit with Kates friends who have the rest of the rooms booked for the weekend.

Unfortunately the mood turns very sour when one lady yells at Pete to ‘go #### himself’ many times!!!

She’s American, and unfortunately a bad example of her countrymen.

Pete and her partner Josh were laughing together, being idiots and having too much fun – which apparently wasn’t allowed!

Party ends.

The worst night sleep follows – dogs, cockerels, loud music and nature, take turns from 4am to 8am.

Not the best start in Kep.

Day 51 – Grumpy Day

Even after a fabulous breakfast, Pete is still grumpy!!

Kate spent time in Africa and I have a Ugandan Wrap and fried potatoes for brekkie. Yum.

But no sleep makes us miserable.

Do nothing except go for a walk.

Eat at Holy Crab at night, decent but not like last nights. Pah.

Thinking we made a mistake booking 4 nights, we contemplate moving on to Vietnam.

I do find we have a pet hanging about outside our room.

Day 52 – National Park & Monastery

Hire a moped and after a ‘bit” of a better nights sleep and no fights, we head into the National Park.

It’s nice and cool and there are a few paths to explore.

If we were brave enough.

But we are not brave enough, after I read a review that said.. watch for snakes! Gulp.

We stick to the standard Insta traps.

We then scooter right along the coast on a great new road. Seeing lots of life!

Takes us through mangroves, salt fields and to another quieter beach.

We spot another temple and stop to take a pic.

But the young, trainee monks invite us inside.

It’s a monastery.

They wanted to show us their paintings and offer us to pray 🙂

This place is totally off the tourist trail and I doubt many westerners would ever have been inside.

A fantastic and humbling experience.

We even had some fun with them, despite none of them speaking any English.

That experience itself made our day!

All the young lads looked so happy.

One of them grabbed some fruit from a tree for me (Pete). I bit into it and they started laughing their heads off!

Tasted disgusting.

Little sods stitched me right up.

I got my own back by nicking their donation money for the temple. That’ll learn em..

..of course I didn’t.

We made a donation and thanked them for allowing us to share their home for a few minutes.

After feeling exhilarated from our monastery experience, we head back.

Road home includes a pit stop for banana roti!

Back to Magic Crab restaurant for dinner and again. It is soooo good.

We love Kep.. so fickle.

Day 53 – Broken Moped

We have a lazy morning at the beach.

It’s Monday and it’s quiet!!

Hurrah!!

Afternoon we take the moto for a coastal drive and go through the salt field community.

The trip is a lot longer and further than we planned.

That’s where we get a puncture!

After spending time drinking winter melon pop with the owner – tastes like feet – we are rescued and given another bike.

We head to the beach and trade in our winning beer pull for.. more beer.

It gives us 6 beers for 6000 riel. About £1.20.

And that’s tourist prices!

Beach with a beer to watch the sunset, before taking the moped home.

We head back out – 4 beers down, and take our last 2 beers to the taco restaurant at the beach.

Cambodian tacos are actually thin rice pancakes.

Mine filled with ????, ???? and ????, spicy and hot.

While there we kidnap another cat..

We decide Kep has grown on us after a ropey start. We just picked the wrong days.

We will actually look back on Kep with lots of fantastic memories:

The Monastery, Kep Crab, Cambodia beer – to name a few.