I would have thought that it would be hard to do less than nothing, but it feels like over the last couple of days that is what we have accomplished. Not to say that is a bad thing as we are on vacation after all, and sometimes you need to just relax and take in the surroundings.

The weather here in Kampot is working against us (or for us if the actual plan was to take a few days off), and the rain has set in. We are used to rain in SE Asia that typically comes in short downpours, but this is the socked in, I’m sticking around for a while kind of rain, and any sort of day trip or anything that we could do would just end up with a bunch of crabby people in a van looking at things from the windows.

We spend these couple of days reading books, having some video chats with the kids back home, and just generally hanging around at our hotel. They have a big sala down at the riverside with a few big basket chairs and I have discovered that they must have been designed with reading a book on your Kindle in mind.

The good news is that it is supposed to clear in a couple of days so we are planning trips to Kep and Bokor Hill station if the weather co-operates. The bad news is that it is supposed to actually get worse after that, and one of the forecasts I read for our next stop in Sihanoukville is for ‘torrential downpour’ for a few days. Based on that forecast we have decided that maybe we should move on from Cambodia for this year and spend our last week back in Thailand where the weather forecast seems a bit more in our favor.

All is not lost here though, as we have had a nice couple of days to relax, and we were able to use the downtime to make the arrangements for the next leg of our trip.

Kampot is a MUCH smaller town than Phnom Penh and is located on a river about 150km south of the capitol and about 15km inland from the sea. We have taken a minibus from Phnom Penh, and aside from the slow progress trying to get through the traffic leaving the city the rest of the ride goes quite smoothly. The minibus even has WiFi for most of the trip so I am able to catch up on a few things and before long we are in Kampot.

The minibus drops us off at a central bus station, and there is immediately a bit of a scrum with all the local tuk-tuk drivers ‘helping’ us with our bags in hope of a picking up a customer. We are not exactly sure how far away our hotel is, but there is now way I am schlepping our increasingly heavy bags more than a block or two, so when a guy offers to take us for $2 it is a no-brainer. Our hotel is a nice quiet place just on the edge of town, so easy walking distance to all of the restaurants and shops, but far enough away from the center to be very peaceful in the evenings. It turns out the $2 was well spent as we are about 1km away from the bus station and I would have been more than a little crabby if we had tried to walk it with all of our stuff.

Of course on the trip over our driver has used the opportunity to talk us into a day trip for the next day. We are not sure how long we will stay in this area, so I suppose it will be good to get some things accomplished early in case the weather turns or we decide to move on.

After checking into our new room and getting our stuff settled, we take a nice walk along the riverside to watch the sunset and find a place for dinner.

The next morning we have our breakfast and get ready in plenty of time for Mr. Bon Loung to pick us up at 9am for our trip out into the Kampot countryside. The plan is for us to be gone for about 5 or 6 hours and make a stops at a salt farm, a pepper farm, some caves, and a few villages and temples. The trip is pretty good – we are riding along in the back of an open air tuk-tuk with good views of everything we pass, and the driver will stop wherever we want to answer questions or to take photos.

Our first couple of stops are at a monastery and a fishing village. The monastery has about 25-30 monks that live there and is surrounded by a small village with a school. The temple is fairly ornate for something this far out of the city, but we have seen a lot of temples in SE Asia so unless they have something special to stand out, many temples seem alike sir. The temple does have some pagodas that were built a number of years ago, and some of them house remains from a small killing field of the Khmer Rouge era – a grim reminder that the regime left it’s legacy everywhere… Back in the tuk-tuk and we stop at a small fishing village. The village itself is built along a small creek that barely looks like it has enough water to float a boat let along a whole village of fishermen, our driver informs us that the village is about 10km to the sea, but because Cambodia is so flat the creek is tidal and the boats come in and go out when the tide is high. It is oddly quiet at mid-day in the village, but the driver explains that the fishermen go out in the evening and fish on the open ocean in the small boats all night and then return in the morning, so they are all sleeping right now. I can’t even begin to imagine being out in one of these small, rickety, old boats in the ocean in the dark, but they do it every day.

Kampot is a major hub for the production of salt for use all across Cambodia – a small amount is exported, but most of the production is sent to other parts of the country. The salt here is ‘farmed’ during the hot season by flooding small fields about the size of a rice paddy with sea water, and then letting the sun evaporate the water leaving the salt behind. The whole cycle takes about 14 days to evaporate the pond and harvest the salt, and this is done over and over again for the roughly 6 months that the hot season lasts. The small fields go for miles in all directions, and the harvested salt is stored in ‘barns’ that are all over the area. The salt is just stored in piles like sand until it is sold and then a crew comes out and fills 100 kilo sacks by hand to be loaded onto a truck and sent to their destination. Because we are here in the low season we can’t see the production of the salt, but we are lucky enough to come by at a time when they are loading a truck and we are able to walk right inside one of the barns to see the huge mounds of salt and the bagging process.

Our tour now leaves the main road and heads off onto some side roads and our next stop at a couple of caves. The side roads vary from gravel roads in decent shape to some single lane dirt trails that are in sad need of some attention to deal with some pretty big potholes! We are bouncing around pretty good in the back of the tuk-tuk for most of the journey, but this is SE Asia, and the norm for all the people living here, so it is just another part of the adventure for us. The scenery more than compensates for the bumpy ride, and we are rewarded with views of rice and corn fields and locals working at the planting as we ride through the countryside.

The caves are a bit of a letdown compared to some of the gigantic caves we have seen in Thailand. The couple of caves we see take only a few minutes a piece to see, and the climb up the stairs probably took longer than the actual exploration of the caves. As is the norm though they do come complete with a couple of teenage boys who insist on inviting themselves along as ‘guides’ and then shaking you down for a ‘tip’ at the end. We have seen this at pretty much every cave we have been to in SE Asia, so are getting used to the process.

After some more time bouncing along through the countryside we come upon a lake known as Secret Lake – not really sure why it is called that because it is clearly on the tourist circuit and has a bunch of salas along one shore where you can sit and have lunch, which we do. The setting is quite relaxing and there are hammocks in the sala where it would be easy to take an afternoon nap, but the lunch itself is a bit of an experience! The restaurant staff does not speak any English, and we don’t speak and Khmer, so our driver who speaks a bit of English tries to make sense of what we are asking for and explain it to our server who I suspect will try to remember and relate it to the cook. After it is said and done we end up with fried rice, which was quite good, and a half chicken – which was literally half the chicken, all chopped up bones and all and served in some sort of chili sauce. We each try a few pieces of what can only really be described as chewing on an old tire before Mrs. Columbus discovers the feet and some organs on the plate that that is enough. Fortunately there are a few dogs scavenging about and we manage to fob off the rest of the chicken parts to them so it looks like we actually finished the whole thing.

After lunch we get back in the tuk-tuk for our final destination, a pepper plantation. Supposedly Kampot is one of the best pepper producing regions in the world and while much of the fields were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, over the last 20 years or so the farms have recovered and are again producing Kampot pepper in quantity. It takes about 6 years for a pepper plant to be mature enough to produce pepper corns, and then it will produce for about the next 6-8 years before you have to cut the whole thing down and start over. We also learn that all pepper corns (black, white, red, green) all come from the same plant, and the only difference is from when they are harvested and how they are dried and processed.

After the pepper plantation it is back to the city and our hotel room where we will wander off into the town to see what we can find for dinner. Overall a good first day in Kampot, and I think I will be happy with our time here.

After our active day yesterday, it is on to some more leisurely adventures for the next couple of days.

Our friend Richard that we know from Thailand is engaged to a girl from Cambodia, and Vanna lives in Phnom Penh, so we are lucky to be able to re-connect with a friendly face and get some additional help figuring out what is worth seeing and what we should skip.

It seems like Vanna knows everyone here, but I suspect that is mostly because she is from a large family, and we are lucky enough to meet most of here sisters and her father 😉 We manage to get out for dinner with them one night, have a nice time talking with them – Vanna doing a lot of the translating because her father and cousins do not speak any English.

Our next day trip is to go out to the temple at Udong. Most of Cambodia is flat – so flat that you can see for miles and miles in most directions, and it is this flat, fertile land that allows them to produce 2 and sometimes 3 harvests per year. The countryside seems like mile after mile of rice fields, and when the rice shoots have grown it would be like a sea of bright green everywhere. Someone we were talking with from here described it as ‘a green so unique that even Crayola can’t duplicate it’ – true to form the scenery is magnificent and we are not disappointed.

But I am getting ahead of myself a bit…

Outside of Phnom Penh about 50 kilometers is one of a small number of ‘mountains’ that rises up out of the otherwise flat plains. It is not much of a mountain in our terms, but more of a hill that rises a couple of hundred meters above the plain. At the top of the mountain there is a fairly modern Buddhist temple along with some old stupas that were apparently built a couple of hundred years ago.

Like so many other temples we have been to this one also has some stairs involved 🙂 There are over 500 stairs to the top, and like so many other times we look all the way up, and then start making our way to the top.

Accompanying us to the top are a couple of teenagers from the local village, offering helpful tidbits of information as we make our way up the stairs. We had read a bit about this on the internet and how the kids would come along and then expect some money when you were done, so it does not come as a complete surprise. At one point they even mention that they will carry us up if we get tired – I should have said yes just to see the expression on their faces, as I probably could have eaten both of the little guys for breakfast!

By the time we reach the top we are a little short of breath, and I think the young guys are worried that I might expire as they grab a fan from a little girl and start to generate a breeze around my head. Little do they know that this is not my first rodeo, and while I may be sweating enough for 3 people, we have conquered far more rugged ascents than this.

All our efforts are well rewarded though as the views from the temple are awesome. We are at the highest point for miles around and it feels like we can see all the way back to Thailand.

After looking around at the temple and the Buddha statues kept there, we climb back down the stairs to jump back in our tuk-tuk. We tip the teenagers a dollar each which was less than their asking price, but I figure we did not really hire them anyway, and I certainly did not make them carry me so we are all good.

The tuk-tuk ride to and from the city was almost as entertaining as the time in Udong. The distance was only about 50 kilometers each way, but the trip takes almost 2 hours each direction. Along the way we see all sorts of interesting things including houses built on stilts, many of the weird motorcycle combinations in my previous post, and a variety of things that just made us go ‘hmmm’. All in all a great day, and quite an uplifting change after our previous day.

On our return to Phnom Penh we reconnect with Vanna to setup our arrangements for the next day. We are moving on to Kampot in the southern part of Cambodia, and Vanna knows all the right people to get us bus tickets, tips on where to stay, and what to see while we are there. Thanks Vanna for all your help, I think we owe you one!

This is our second trip to Cambodia – we went to Angkor Wat back in 2011, and while we have not logged as much time here as we have in Thailand, we are starting to get a good feel for the country and it’s people.

Like many countries Cambodia has a troubled past, but of particular interest to me is that one of the most tragic periods in Cambodia’s history happened in my lifetime, and it is something that we do not hear much about in the west.

Cambodia suffered a lot of ‘collateral damage’ during the US war in Vietnam and once South Vietnam fell to the NVA forces, the NVA started to support a local uprising in neighboring Cambodia by some insurgents known as the Khmer Rouge. By 1975 the local forces could no longer hold back the insurgents and April 1975, the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot assumed power in Cambodia.

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge believed that the root of all trouble in Cambodia was from foreign influence and industrialization, and that the country could rise again to greatness by removing all these foreign influences and becoming a completely agrarian society. Upon seizing power the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh and other cities and forcibly removed ALL the people, sending them to the countryside to work in the fields. Millions of people had all of their land and personal property stripped from them and were forced to work on the farms for no pay and given only meager allotments of food on which they could barely survive.

To prevent any sort of uprising or return to the industrial ways, educated people and people with any attachment to the former government were rounded up and sent to detention centers where they were imprisoned and tortured until they confessed to crimes against the Khmer Rouge – once they had confessed they were sent to what became known as killing fields and executed in mass graves for their alleged crimes.

Over 5 years until the country was liberated, the genocide claimed the lives of over 2 million Cambodians at the hands of their own countrymen and amounted to about 30-40% of the entire population at the time.

Some of the sites where these atrocities occurred are in or near Phnom Penh, and have been preserved as a reminder of the past, and even though the subject matter is quite heartbreaking, it was important to me to visit some of these places to see first-hand what the country had been through not all that long ago. Mrs. Columbus is not thrilled about the plan for the day, but I mumble something about learning from the past and off we go.

Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.

We have arranged for a tuk-tuk driver to take us out for the day for the princely sum of $15 US. The first leg of our trip is a short journey about 15km outside of Phnom Penh to a place called Choeung Ek, more commonly referred to as the killing fields. This is only one of what is estimated to be about 300 locations like this scattered across the country. To date, they have recovered the remains of over 8800 men, women and children that were executed at this location, but they believe that thousands remain uncovered.

There is a guided listening tour that is provided, and it is more than just a little humbling to stand in some of the places and listen to the description of events that occurred here. The center of the site contains a large stupa that was erected here to house the remains of the people that have been uncovered at the site.

We spent a couple of hours at the site going through the guided tour, and looking through the museum at the artifacts of a dark period in Cambodian history, and neither of us really has much to say during the ride back to Phnom Penh.

The next stop on the tour is at the Tuol Sleng Interrogation Center. Known as S-21 for the region that it was located in, it was originally a school in the middle of Phnom Penh, but was converted to a detention center for the Khmer Rouge to hold prisoners in while they were interrogated and then most often sent off to meet their fate at Choeung Ek.

There are 4 buildings at the school, and the original classrooms were carved up into small cells about 2.5 x 6 feet where the prisoners were held. There were no beds or mats on the floor and detainees slept directly on the hard tile floors. Some classrooms were partitioned into larger places where the interrogations and torture occurred under horrible conditions.

To add to the heartbreak, even as news of the atrocities started to make their way outside of Cambodia, few nations came to their aid. After the Khmer Rouge government fell in 1979 most western nations continued to decline assistance, and in fact Pol Pot’s deposed regime was still recognized by the west as the ‘legitimate’ government of Cambodia well into the 1980s – all because the ouster of the Khmer Rouge was assisted by the Vietnamese and the Soviet Union (can’t be having that communism spread even if millions of people are suffering).

Pol Pot died in 1998 having never been arrested or tried for any of his crimes against his people – he and many of the other leaders of the Khmer Rough had been living in seclusion in the north western part of Cambodia near the Thailand border. A small handful of the leaders were arrested and have been attending trials put on by a world court for their actions during this period.

Which brings us around to the wonderful people – even after all that they have been through you might think that they would have some resentment to the foreigners that started things, or never came to help, or who left behind millions of land mines, or to other Cambodians who seem to have more then the average person here, but it is not like that at all. All of the people that we have interacted with are very friendly, helpful and hard working, just trying to get ahead, or keep their families fed. It is an incredible testament to the spirit of the Cambodian people, and once again we are humbled.

Our day trip ends with a stop at a large local market, but after all we have seen our hearts are just not in it, so we head back to our hotel to unwind and take in the day. It has been quite an education, and not the typical type of adventure that is fun to blog about, but I think even Mrs. Columbus would agree that it was valuable for us to go, and helps us to understand better Cambodia and it’s people as we travel through different parts of the country.

A few short paragraphs and some photos barely scratch the surface of the story, but for anyone who wants to learn more on the subject I can highly recommend the film The Killing Fields and the book First They Killed My Father

Back to lighter topics next, I promise….

My next post was going to be about our day at the S21 Detention Center and the Killing Fields – a somber topic to be sure – but I feel compelled to push that back a day in order to post this sidebar.

It has come to my attention that we North Americans are not reaching the peak of efficiency in terms of how we use our vehicles. Back home there are people who have motorcycles, and you can see them out riding around perhaps on a joy ride, or in some cases even going to or from work, but almost always with a single passenger or purpose. I am convinced that the people of SE Asia and other countries have figured out ways to get far more additional efficiency from their motorcycles, so I set out to do some research which I present below:

Things you can do with a motorcycle

You can of course carry people – yourself or maybe a friend..

… or 3 (notice that a true lady will always ride side-saddle!)

I believe that there must be some sort of rule that limits you to perhaps 5-6 on a bike in which case you must then ride the bus.

More significantly, you can increase the efficiency of your motorcycle by transporting goods:

Produce

Naturally you can’t store your produce or other goods without some baskets!

And you may also need some packaging materials.

Then you will need a place to store all your things, so to build that you will need some construction materials – yes the last photo is of a guy carrying a sheet of glass!!

Once you have your place constructed you will need to furnish it:

And then you will need some food and beverage!

Clearly the evidence shows that we could be far more efficient with our use of this method of transportation. In many cases I have seen more than one of these uses combined at the same time!

Naturally, one might wonder what you do if you need to move your motorcycle around – the answer is quite obvious, you use a car!