Vacation in Paradise

As cheesy as it sounds, that's what our vacation back in May was: paradise. We spent five days on the southern coast of Cambodia, about 30 km/18 miles from the Vietnamese border. Those days were filled with walks on the beach, swimming in the warm ocean waters, napping in hammocks, enjoying fresh seafood, reading novels, and just spending time together. Assuming the week was only made up of one picture-perfect moment after another, there wouldn't be much else to tell and I would leave you with a collection of envy-inducing pictures of pristine beaches, turquoise waters, and us looking annoyingly tan and happy. Lucky for you, there were some "I can't believe this is happening to me (again)" moments, which will however most probably be overwhelmed by descriptions of amazing food and plenty of shots of picturesque landscapes and colorful sunsets. I hope you enjoy both.

We set off Monday morning in high spirits and an embarrassingly large amount of stuff for five days, due to the fact that we were both too lazy to make the effort to decide exactly what we really did and did not need to bring with us. A friend of ours, who is a tuk-tuk driver, drove us to the bus station and I went to buy the tickets. I asked for two tickets to Kep on the bus that left at 12:00. The answer: no bus at 12. My inquiries as to why there was no bus leaving at 12 were all answered with: no bus at 12. We ended up having to wait in the broiling heat for three hours for the next bus. Yeah, not exactly the start to the stress-free vacation I had envisioned. 

making sandwiches on the bus

To make matters worse, by the time we made it to Kep, it was dark (7 pm) and there were no more boats going out to Rabbit Island, where we were going to be spending the first half of our week. Thankfully, the tuk-tuk driver we randomly chose to trust from the crowd that assailed us when we exited the bust, brought us to a great guesthouse and even picked us up the next morning to bring us to the boat going to the island. The best part of our unplanned night in Kep: dinner at the famous Crab Market. I unfortunately don't have any pictures that capture that moment of arriving, hot, tired, and starving hungry at the restaurant, and then being greeted by cool sea breezes, the sound of the ocean, a glass of chilled white wine, and heaping servings of local crab. It was heavenly.  

The next morning we woke up early and made our way to Rabbit Island (no, not this rabbit island).

smooth sailing

reminds me of Robinson Caruso/Pirates of the Caribbean/Treasure Island

The plan was to do nothing but swim, nap in the shade, read, enjoy a fresh coconut here and there. Which is exactly what we did - minus the coconuts. And that's also pretty much all you can do on the island, since there aren't any jet-ski rentals, surfing lessons, or beach volleyball nets to be found, which does contribute to a nice, quiet beach experience. The accommodations are simple, the food more or less edible, and there's only a few hours of electricity in the evening. The only problem we had was the "less edible", or actually just plain less food. Since there were almost no foreign tourists on the island with us, the beach-side restaurants had seemed to decide that it wasn't worth it getting fresh food delivered, which meant they were running out of everything and the stuff they did have was getting progressively less fresh. In the end, we were pretty glad that we didn't have more than seven meals on the island (the pancakes for breakfast were at least always delicious).

our bungalow is there between the palm trees

"food always tastes better with sand between your toes" (Anthony Bourdain) so that makes bad food palatable in this case?

We also explored the shoreline of the island a little bit, with me searching for shells and the ever-elusive sea glass. We didn't overdo with the walking though, preferring instead to go back and nap in hammocks. When I was in Cambodia with my sister last year we decided to do a little two-hour hike around the island in flip-flops which ended up taking four hours and would have been much better with heavy-duty footwear. So, none of that this time. 

Even though we loved the time at the beach, the bad  - and steadily growing worse - quality of the food that had us praying not to get sick at every meal, made us glad to leave after two days and continue our vacation elsewhere. Read on in the next post for paradise part II.