We spent Xmas in Kampot. It's a sleepy and dusty little town - & quite charming especially at night as the little bars and restaurants open & the street stalls do a roaring trade. It's really quite pretty.
And then we left for Battambang - which is a different story. Cambodia's 2nd biggest city it's dusty and dirty and busy. Walking out to dinner last night there was none of the twinkling fairy lights or beautifully restored buildings of Kampot. Just lots of rubbish, fat rats and diesel fumes. The kids were a bit of "why are we here???".Dinner turned out to be great fun, catching up with Robbie Fraser. And Robbie - who'd arrived here a day earlier - had a tuk tuk driver sorted to take us out into the country side today. It was a great day.
Rural Cambodia is gorgeous. Our drivers/guides had a good little circuit organised - rice paddies at different stages of production, some beautiful temples, rice paper and sticky rice getting made in peoples homes.
And perhaps the least hygienic food establishment I've seen anywhere in the world - a fish paste factory that was essentially mounds of fish on a dirty,cracked concrete floor, some drying in the sun and others getting shoveled into big tubs to be salted (and maybe fermented??). Lots of flys. And all handily positioned next to a rancid drain. We'd sampled the rice papr and sticky rice but the fish paste was too much.
A really nice day. Lunch and some hammock time the perfect way to end it up.
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