We hauled our luggage onto the dusty sidewalk and looked for the guy from our guesthouse, Vanna Bungalows, who was supposed to be picking us up. He was nowhere in sight and a couple of tuk tuk drivers tried to coax us into their waiting coaches. I called Vanna Bungalows and spoke with the guy only to find out that we had gotten off at the wrong bus stop and fell for a scam to get tourists off the bus and charge them more for a 5km ride to the guesthouse area. Luckily, the guy from Vanna Bungalows arranged for his own tuk tuk guy to come pick us up and hot, sweaty, and dusty we finally made it to our lodgings.
On the Way to the Islands
The bungalows were nice private rooms in private buildings each with their own bathrooms, beds, and AC or a fan. The next morning we woke up for an early breakfast and departure for Koh Pos, a small island off the shore for some snorkeling. Down by the pier we walked out to a little green boat belonging to a fisherman and his nets. Our tuk tuk driver, Ly, also came with us as a guide toting a plastic bag with masks and snorkels. The boat pushed off and puttered towards the many surrounding islands. Apparently some of them belong to Vietnam and the area is right on the border line. We passed Mango Island, Chili Island, Rabbit Island, and others before arriving in a shallow bay off Koh Pos (not quite clear what the translation is for "Pos", but "Koh" means "island" in Khmei). Jumping off the boat and into the shallow water, we waded to the shore evading starfishes and sea urchins before arriving at a very very small village. Ly walked us around pointing out baskets full of small crabs that were too small to sell, but enough for the villagers to eat and he led us to the neighboring village through the forest. There we saw more little huts and what looked like the school, even though there wasn't really a school there. Ly spoke with some of the people and they dragged out a large crab trap with a 3 meter long python inside. He didn't look too happy but the village children were fascinated with their captured snake. One woman even squeezed a little bit of bread into its cage, which it promptly ignored and instead eyed the baby in her other arm.
Snake in a Cage
After the snake spectacle we walked around and Ed and I played a bit of volleyball with the locals. There are volleyball nets EVERYWHERE here built out of fishing net or loose weave or whatever they can find. Walking around on the island we didn't find any nice beaches to snorkel on so we waded back out to the boat and departed for our next destination, Rabbit Island.
According to Lonely Planet, Rabbit Island is so named because the locals think it looks like a rabbit, but I couldn't find the rabbit from any angle. The boat parked in another shallow bay, this time near some seaweed farms and we hopped out following Ly to a beach a short walk away. The beach is supposed to be one of Cambodia's best, but it was hardly anything worthy of note. The only good thing about it was that it was pretty sparsely populated because it's quite remote. There were also chairs and hammocks provided and mats from the locals who ran a little bungalow guesthouse and restaurant. It was very relaxing to just chill on the beach, read, and suntan with the occasional dip in the warm water every once in a while. We tried to go snorkeling, but the masks we borrowed from our guide were so old and scratched that you really couldn't see anything at all through them. We all ate lunch on the island and had our first experience with Kep's prime seafood. Nancy and I ordered a fried rice with fish and a squid with black pepper and it was very tasty considering that they prepared it right on the beach. The water started to get choppy around 3 so we trekked back to the boat through a little bit of forest and cow pies and left back to Kep.
Beach at Rabbit Island
Finally making it back to Vanna Bungalows, everyone freshened up with a shower and changed clothes for dinner down at the crab shacks. The crab shacks are a series of shacks on the water full of seafood restaurants. With all the choices we settled on the shack with the longest lanai over the water. I can't remember what the name of the place we went to was, but we ordered fried crab, "gary crab", fried prawns, and "crab in the hot oil". Watching the sunset from the lanai I could see a woman wade out into the tide and retrieve a crab cage from the water. I'm couldn't see because of the glare, but I'm pretty sure she grabbed the crabs that we were going to eat straight from the ocean. The sunset in Kep was one of the most beautiful sunset's I've ever seen (and that's saying something coming from Hawaii). The colors and clouds were totally surreal looking more like a photoshopped portrait background than an actual place. That dinner was the best crab that I've ever had and one of the messiest dinners ever because of all the sauce and work involved in cracking the crab. One of the dishes was prepared with legendary green Kampot peppers. Kampot is known around the world for its potent black pepper plantations and rightly so as it is the best pepper I've ever had and I'm not sure if I can go back to normal pepper. There's a lime-sugar-salt-pepper sauce that is served with pretty much every seafood dish here and it makes everything taste infinitely better. I'll have to make some when I start cooking.
The Sunset View at Dinner
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