Arcadia

Arcadia. What more can be said than that this place is awesome. Arcadia is a bar / hostel in Kampot that we heard about from some other people that we were travelling with. They said it was a great place and that we should check it out and I am so glad that we did.

Arcadia is up the river from Kampot and a little isolated but this just adds to its charm and makes it an amazing hidden away paradise. The moment we got there we knew that we had stumbled onto something special and we were certainly not wrong! The bar is build on 2 levels with the lower level having a really low ceiling and hammocks all along it as a chill out zone, with the top section being a little more open for people to sit and chill. The best thing about the bar though is that it is on the river and lends its self to having an amazing time in the water.

When we first arrived we grabbed a beer and took a seat to look over the amazing sites that were there in front of us. As the bar is build over the river the whole idea is to get people in the water having fun and so they have built a few things to make that even more fun than usual. The first thing that they have that I have always wanted to go on is a blob. A blob is basically a massive air bag that is partially inflated and then floats on the water. A willing victim will then climb onto the far end og the blob that is out in the water before someone, usually a few people, will jump off of the banister on the top floor of the bar onto the other end causing them to launch into the air. This is fun to do if you just have one person jumping but turns into an epic event when you have 2 people doing the jump. Myself and Tim nominated ourselves to be chief lanchers forthe day and seemed to spend about an hour jumping off the banister and climbing back up the ladders to launch more and more people. The more people saw our launching skills the more wanted a turn with the self proclaimed “master of the launch”. If we had decided to charge that day I am sure we could have made a quite tidy profit!

In addition to the blob Arcadia also had a floating island with a massive ladder on it. This ladder gave 2 jumping points, the first at about 3 meters above the water and the second at about 6 meters. It is surprising how scary it gets looking down from 6 meters at the water below and knowing that you have to jump from there. thanks to the waterproof camera’s that we all had with us we have some amazing pics and video of the both the people jumping from a far and everyone looking at the camera as they plunged into the depths. I will start to put this video together and get it uploaded as soon as I can.

Arcadia had one more fun trip up its sleeve which is was pretty awesome but scared us so much that we only really tried it 3 times. It was basically a massive swing that was over the lake and used human power to make it move and accelerate people more and more until reaching a crazy speed. Rocking backwards and forwards we made it move more and more until eventually one person jumps off of the far end and then does some crazy sort of flip in the air before making an impressive landing in the river. We didnt start playing with this until the end of the day due to all of the time we had spend playing around on the blob but that doesn’t mean it was any less awesome.

The only thing that Arcadia had going for it that we better than the super cool water sports was the fact that it also seemed to have an amazing soundtrack to the day. The music that was pumping out from the bar was always just the right volume and seemed to be a constant stream of old skool hip hop classics that everyone seemed to love as well as a chill out mix. I could happily have had that as the soundtrack to my life and stayed there for much longer.

Travel dictates though that we should keep moving forwards and keep trying new things before we ever get settled but I am confident that Arcadia is somewhere I could certainly stay for a few months, working behind the bar and chilling out all day. Who knows what will happen in future, all options are currently open 🙂