My journey through Cambodia

ANKOR WAT TEMPLE, CAMBODIA
I took the long bus ride to the Cambodia border from Bangkok and then on to Siem Reap where I got a hotel for a week.
One day I hired a tuk-tuk for the day and went to see the huge temple complex of Ankor Wat. It was old and beaten by the sun and war and yet still standing.

I took many photographs and had some meals and walked around and just looked and felt glad I had come to see it but it was so big I could only see a small part of it all in one day but that was enough as by this time I had seen many temples in Thailand and was feeling all templed out.

KEP, CAMBODIA
Travelling on from Angkor Wat temples in a bus to a little visited place called Kep in the south west of Cambodia.
After I’d seen Angkor Wat temple complex I caught an old bus with broken axles and headed to Kep by the sea. It was a long ride with no sleep even though the bus went really slow to miss all the potholes in the road, but it was fascinating looking out of the window at all the houses beside the road for hour after hour.
I was dropped beside a deserted road in a little place that looked like nowhere and seemingly a hard place to get out of. So I asked more than once if this was Kep.
I choose what looked like it might be a hotel and after some calling out: is there anyone here, was welcomed to a nice room upstairs.

Apparently there were not many tourists and so I wasn’t expected and I never book ahead, not after a few hotels in Thailand used my credit card to take extra money out without telling me and me not finding out until I got back home.
I had ten great days in Kep and loved every minute of them with most of my time spent by the sea and walking along the coast road taking photos. The monkeys were so tame and there were whole families of them in the road staring back at me, or in the trees looking down.
Every day when it got too hot the locals chilled out on hammocks strung in the shade of the car park with their kids wrapped in their arms. I kept going back to my room to cool down in the air conditioning. I was the only tourist there for most of the time but towards the end of my stay a handful of Japanese came on a bus.

After four of five days I decided to catch a boat out to one of the islands and as I was crossing over, the Japanese who were in another boat came up beside my boat and we waved and took photos in passing and as their boat was faster they got to the island before me, but I was happy to be on the sea in a small boat ploughing the waves and I had my straw hat to keep the not sun off my head.

KOH TONSAY
I was dropped off on the sand of the beach and had the whole day to myself so I went exploring the small island which was called Rabbit Island or Koh Tonsay. I walked most of the way around it until I came to some swamp land that I couldn’t get through and so had to turn back.
The back of the island was where the local fishermen and their families lived and worked but they were not keen on talking to foreigners but it was nice to see how they lived on their island. I didn’t see many vegetables being grown but I supposed they sold fish to the mainland and bought what they needed.
The front part of the island was the tourist bit with a lot of chalets mostly of grass and reeds scattered about and just for the tourists to sleep in.
The was the nicest of all the many island I’d been to in Asia and one of the quietest with no traffic at all and was laid back with an atmosphere of lazy and no rush today.

After a swim I had a good meal and talked to a beautiful woman in one of the beach restaurants then got the boat back.
Kep is not the popular tourist resort that tourists know about, and I think most go there by accident, as I did, pick a place and just go, but I liked it there even though there’s not much to do in the way of amusements and no TV or internet just laid back and easy with no crowds and lots of sand and big sky full of sun.
One day I had to go to the nearest town to get my visa for Vietnam and that town was crowded and full of noise and I was glad to get back to the quiet of Kep.
Because there was no internet or TV I slept well, ate well, read books and walked when I felt like it and so for me Kep was a place to rest and recharge my body and spirit before moving on to the next place.
Images taken by me...