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Crabs
Entry 24 of 32 | show all | print this entry |
Pics from Siem Reap - http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=yrxns91.4zjzr951&x=0&y=-huoj86&localeid=en_US
Crabs...we watched them go straight from the trap to the grill to our plates....YUM! (seafood is Kep's only industry)
Kep was once a seaside resort. Then the Khmer Rouge came to town (see the pattern developing?). Kep and Kampot were one of their last holdouts, so the town is just starting to see tourists rolling through. We spoke to some locals who said there weren't even guest houses in Kep 5 years ago. For that matter, there weren't any Cambodians. The locals were too scared (smart) to live there and moved out. In 1994, there was actually a very well documented account of foreigners getting kidnapped by the KR on the road between Kep and Kampot. None of them survived. (Don't worry, Mom, that's why we're avoiding Burma (and now Tibet) this trip).
We took an 18km bike ride around the mountain range that looms over the town and the effect of their recent history was tough to miss. As we tend to do, we rode off the beaten path of the main road and biked around a little further inland. There were seaside mansions, one right after another. Back in the day, Kep was THE beach-side resort town and only the wealthiest of Cambodians (i.e. government officials) could afford to live there. These places were massive. As we rode past them, however, they were no longer inhabited by Cambodia's elite. Life is nothing, if not ironic and the mansions are now inhabited by Cambodia's impoverished. During the KR years, most of the mansions were shelled by mortars, riddled with bullets and bulldozed with tanks. What were seaside mansions are now seaside ruins. So Kep's poor put up a tin wall here, threw up a plastic sheet there and are now squatting in some of the nicest homes in the country.
Having caught the Indiana Jones bug, I desperately wanted to park our bikes and explore some of the homes that were still vacant. Unfortunately, I saw one too many one-legged and no-legged Cambodians begging in the streets. Putting on my Indy fedora wasn't worth the risk of stepping on an undetonated land mine.
Sadly, Kep was our last stop in Cambodia.
Now we're waking up and screaming GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM!
Cambodian Cultural Difference - HALLO! : Okay, so this is more of a traveling phenomenon than a Cambodian phenomenon, but the kids are so cute there, I had to throw it under Cambodia. No matter where we've traveled, we are always bombarded with waves and greetings from the local children. Particularly during our 18km bike marathon, we would here a high-pitched "HALLO!!!!" coming from out of nowhere, only to see a naked 4 year old running out of his house chasing after us, arm frantically waving in there air. Tracy...err I mean Miss America... likes her Southeast Asian celebrity status so much that if somehow a child DOESN'T see us, SHE will scream out to them. She will do anything for her HALLO! fix.
Funnily enough, as we rode on the back of the tuk tuk to the Vietnamese border, the HALLOS! changed to BYE BYE!!!'s.
Where I stayed:
Seaside Guest House
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