Need for Speed: Asia

Having moved on from the party Island of Koh Rong and having a day to recover in our nice hostel in Sihanoukville we’ve now made our way to the small town of Kampot on the banks of the creatively named Kampot river. The town is much smaller and quieter than some of the others we have been to recently, but the change of pace has been nice for a couple of days. Even getting here was a lazier experience than usual. When we looked into the prices it was only a couple of dollars more for us to get a Taxi for the hour and a half journey than to mess about with the bus and tuk tuks at each end so we decided to get picked up at our hostel and driven directly to the new one without any issues (or dust!).

Rather than booking accommodation we have just started to go with the “it’ll be ‘right” approach and just take ourselves to a new town and then look for something. No matter what there is always somewhere cheap to stay and as it happens the first place we came to in Kampot (which we had been recommended anyway) had a private room for us to share for $13 dollars a night so works out even cheaper than our dorm room in Sihanoukville (although we don’t have the pool that they did). The place we are staying is called the Fruit Garden Guest house and is run by a nice French lady who seems to be pretty chilled out and laid back which is always good. The vibe of the place is really nice with hammocks near the bar area along with a swing in the tree and lots of fairy light in the trees which makes it quite pretty at night. The only issue with the place though is that with so many plants and fruit trees etc. there seems to be an abundance of flying things that want to eat me. Every time I go out there I get savaged in seconds to the point where at night I have started to put trousers on as its better to sweat than to keep getting bitten.

After talking to the staff here about things to do we decided to take a trip into the Preah Monivong national park as apparently there are some decent views. Everyone we talked to about it and every review we read said the same thing. “Rent Mopeds as the drive is great but there is not much at the end”. Armed with this information we rented our mopeds for $6, fueled up and headed out onto the wild roads of Cambodia to climb a mountain.

The first few mins of driving was probably the worst as once we got fuel we then had to get over a rather busy bridge with plenty of local traffic on it. The trick is to just keep moving, no sudden changes of direction, no stopping… just keep going. The traffic here seems to kind of have a flow and everything moves to avoid objects and tends to flow together. If you try and drive “properly” then it will all go wrong for you. It is not uncommon to see someone turn into the street on your side of the road and then wait for a gap in traffic to move to the right side so as long as you are fully aware that you will see some crazy stuff then everything is ok. After about 5 mins of driving though we got to the entrance of the national park and from there it was a completely different ballgame. The road up the mountain was excellent and by that I don’t mean for Cambodian standards, I mean for European standards. It was well surfaced and I was even super impressed to find notice that it also had a really well designed drainage system running along side it so accommodate the mountain run off from heavy rains. I later found out that the Chinese had bought the whole area at the very top to develop and so had built the road which suddenly made a lot more sense since Cambodian civil engineering is a little different than most people are used too.

The drive up the road was great with amazing views and no traffic at all. On the 25 min ride up to the top we only saw about 10 other vehicles so had a nice slow and steady assent up the mountain, stopping every now and again to take some photos and see what we could find. We had been told that it was worth going to the very top as it is the sight of a strange abandoned casino, church and few other buildings. Apparently the area started to be developed pre world war 2 and then stopped during the war. After that they started again, however the Khmer Rouge dynasty seemed to put a stop to that. What they have ended up with is a quite large hotel building that is actually just a concrete shell and was never finished. It is now showing the signs of its age and I don’t think they will ever do anything with it. About 5 mins away from this building is a huge hotel and casino resort that looks so out of place. There is literally nothing around for miles and then this huge complex just sat on top of a mountain. The really weird part is that there is no one there. The car park for this place could easily fit a few hundred cars, yet there were about about 4 when we went there. At first we though it was closed so decided to go and investigate only to find out it was open and fully functional. Even though there were more staff than visitors it still looked like a very active hotel and would have been well placed anywhere in the world with top quality service and presentation, it just looked so out of place though because of where it was. We had dinner there and were also shocked that the prices were no more expensive than they had been other places we had been, yet we got much better service and could even see the kitchen and so could tell it used western standards of hygiene which is always nice to see.

After finishing our filling meal we jumped back on the mopeds and headed back down the mountain. I am really glad that we got them as everyone was right, the ride was certainly the best part of the day and if we had taken a tuk tuk it would have ended up costing us more money and would have struggled up the hill before getting to the top for us not really see anything special. It was a nice steady ride back through the park before we hit the chaos of the city again but I think the trick is just to close your eyes and go for it. Need for speed: Asia style