Kep-sur-Mer

I thought Kampot was the best sleepy town in Cambodia, and then I arrived in Kep, even smaller, even sleepier! There is very little to do in Kep and therein, to my mind, lies its appeal. I’m staying in a ridiculously beautiful guesthouse on the foothills of a jungled mountain, surrounded by tropical fruit-trees and creepers blossoming in superabundance. My room has a private balcony and hammock from which I can listen to the geckos honking away to each other in the evening. This is the view from my balcony at sunset, which I have taken to enjoying in company of a margarita. Bokor Mountain is the square shaped outcrop in the distance.


Sundowners, very civilised. My days have largely consisted of walking to the beach and crab market, reading, and working away on my morbid, angst-ridden, tropics-addled Magnum Opus, and no doubt, future great shame. Oh yes, and writing long, rambling blog entries. At the end of the main beach, there is a large concrete sculpture of a mermaid who for some reason doesn’t have a tail.

There’s an island nearby – Rabbit Island, half an hour away by boat – and a trip there doesn’t demand much more than lying on the beach, walking to the next beach, and waiting for lunch to be caught and cooked. I ate mangosteens on the beach with a couple of toothy kids and inexplicably suffered a brief attack of the Angelinas. The attack passed soon enough. My ride to the jetty was with a guy on a motorbike who regaled me with Cambodian pop songs on the way. This truly is a fabulous place. There’s plenty of building activity which suggests to me that a wake-up from the slumbersome pace is on the cards. It is only the necessity of organising my visa for Myanmar, not to mention figuring out how I will get there, that is impelling me to leave for big, bad Phnom Penh. Alas.