After a fairly miserable breakfast we headed off, late, via minibus, to Kep, which is about 3 hours away eastwards along the coast. It rained. We backtracked past the mountains again on the Phnom Penh road at first, the Elephant Mountains again I think and then turned off east. Could distantly see the waterfalls in the mountains. Passed around the shores of a lake too, in the vicinity of Prey Nop. I finally saw some children riding buffalo in the fields, which I have wanted to see ever since reading 'The Second Jungle Book'.
The road was simply terrible in places, wet red earth running like blood in the ditches, we even saw a stuck tuk-tuk with three grinning Cambodians on top of it. Many roadworks and bridge constructions, causing intensly difficult obstacle navigation, with ironically positioned advertising boards for Anchor Cement, imported from Thailand.
The Kampot area seems to handle salt production, as well as produce the huge clay pots used nationally for water storage. More ironic positioning: I saw one traditional 'pottery' /house making these and right next door a business selling blue plastic H2O tanks. The Cambodian habit of co-locating businesses coming through again. Also saw the Angkor beer brewery. Spotless in a sea of mud.
Saw more pigs in this area. I also noticed it seemed to be a Muslim community we were passing by, the first I have seen in Cambodia - two mosques and what appeared to be an Imam school.
Kep was the closest Cambodia ever got to a riviera in the 1960's, with some beautiful contemporary and Art Deco french architecture in the huge seaside villas. It was always just a resort though, no real underlying infrastructure, with the nearest genuine village being Kampot about 20 mins away.
Kep was completely burned out in the Khmer Rouge era and since then has remained a disjointed series of small markets, attempted redevelopment (including an imported beach) and plot upon plot of walls and abandoned husks of villas. It's almost a ghost town. I absolutely loved it. I made a huge fuss about seeing the abandoned villas, which none of the others had heard of, even Erica tried to tell me there was only one left! When we started spotting them she gratifyingly got quite excited about the graffiti, which was indeed fantastic.
They were very impressive and very sad. The road layout and style and its location next to the sea had me thinking constantly of Truro and Falmouth (but sadder!). Also a satisfying finish to my tour of abandoned structures in SE Asia: the concrete roads of Ninh Binh, Hanoi skyscrapers, most buildings in Phnom Penh at one time and finally relics of the past in Kep.
On arrival at what is soon to be the Kep Oceanarium, run by MCC, we met Zach, MCC's hairy american marine biologist and Paul, MCC's tattooed, bald, muscular founder, and had a short tour. We also saw Ali at the Oceanarium and also Bok, who i think is a local and a marine biologist. Certainly he can scuba dive and knows everyone. He is always smartly dressed, as a re the boat captains, in those striped shirts the asians seem to like.(Mr Han, the 'middle boat' captain, wears gangnam style trousers). One of the ideas for the aquarium is to have a tank full of the trash we collect from the beaches every day, (as well as sand we collect too!) to demonstrate to Cambodians what it all physically looks like. They have determined that visitors to Kep are primarily rich Cambodians and Vietnamese.
Next, we headed off for a tour, in jeeps, of the Kep National Park. These were original Vietnam war jeeps, complete with rifle peephole and appalling seats. Zach was driving ours. He freely admitted he had not 'driven stick' for some years. I ended up telling him how to throw the clutch etc. I could have driven better than he did. We stalled many times. Then we headed uphill. Ali (the younger) said later that she was glad I had been there! It was great fun! Needless to say we did not see a thing in the National Park except for a great view. I will remember the rain though.
It was then off to a local crab market and associated restaurant shacks for a fantastic lunch of fesh seafood. I am not a crab fan but this was delicious. Also had prawns. All totally fresh. The restaurant too was in a stilt house built over the water, with one side open to the sea. Fantastic views and even when it rained, good fun.
We heard a little about the history of MCC and how Zach came to be working in seahorse breeding, with me asking most of the questions. He has been here about 2 years and stated initially as the Dive instructor in Kim's position. Paul asked him one day out of the blue if he thought he could breed seahorses, about six months ago he was successful and his mentor is now the Irishman, Keelan, who features in The Seahorse Man documentary and runs 'Save Our Seahorses'. Zach is a big fan of Keelan's idea to breed seahorses for the chinese medicine market. The Seahorse Trust, which is the name of the relevant website, is apparently an amalgam of the various charities and partners involved in seahorse conservation. This includes 'Neil' who is the Dorset man who can 'tag' seahorses, which Zach is very interested in doing in the future.
He and Paul tried to do this in Sihanoukville however the corruption, other costs, local authorities with tourist priorities and primarily the unreliable electricity supply meant that just after the first broods were born, they all died! Apparently seahorses are extremely sensitive to sound and having the generators running upset them enormously. Zach said there were so many potential studies and further research that could be done, they are just starting out really. Feeling dutiful I raised the possibilities of local private sponsorship (similar to what Vietnam Projects Abroad is doing with the orphanage) and contacting the Jersey Zoo. Zach was polite. ( I suspect that the Monterey Aquarium in California is probably a much better bet than the ol' Jersey!)
One day Paul had suggested over a beer moving the operation to Kep and that was that. Eventually the whole programme may move. Aside from being much nicer than Sihanoukville, the Kep local authorities are comparatively enthusiastic. Nothing to do with Paul apparently getting in a little trouble in the village over his treatment of a local girl.
Then we finally set off for Paul's house to see the remaining seahorses and to meet Boozer the bamboo shark ( Zach rescued him from the crab market). And Paul's Thai wife and four children. Nice house.
We finally saw seahorses. 'Princess' is (of course) the name of Zach's first female seahorse, duly rescued from the generators at Sihanoukville. She is about 5 inches long.
There were also three further juvenile females and one juvenile male, all the same age and about 3 inches in length. He had just reached sexual maturity, before the females. ( They don't know whether this is usual or not, more potential research areas). Identifiable by the fact that his pouch has turned red. However, he and one of the females do perform the courtship dance every morning. I thought he was lovely and watched him for quite a while. The male was amusing to watch as he was quite active and kept deliberately floating up in the pump's air bubbles and then curling himself coquettishly around the lamp.
Zach has an entire food chain set up in Paul's kitchen, he cultivates algae in a bag on a hanging rail in the garden outside the back door, he then feeds this to plankton, feeds that to shrimp, and shrimp to seahorses. Watch out if you're getting a drink from the kitchen fridge. ;o)
We set off in the jeeps again for the local market, which was bursting with totally fresh seafood, in fact you could see the crab baskets floating off the promenade, some of which the women had just hauled in in order to sell crabs straight from the basket. We could have bought some, taken them along to one of the local crab shacks, or even just a hearth in the market itself and got them to cook it for us.
Kep is also the Durian capital of Cambodia. These fruit are notorious for their sickly sweet smell, with some people being very sensitised to it and unable to be in the vicinity. It even warns you about it in the guide book! It smells slightly rotten even when fresh.
We then took a little detour to see monkeys for some of the others who had not seen them before. Suki ( a MCC englishman who apparently sucked his thumb when he was 12 and is still called suki) had brought bananas. Mild chaos ensued. Not nearly as good as my monkey fight on Halong Bay!
Boat, no boat - by now we had heard there would be no boat to the island that evening, so we were to stay in Sihanoukville. We actually got back quite late, it was dark and raining. Ended up in the Sakal guesthouse, which was very noisy but at least I had my own room. Went for a walk down the hill to the beach with Abby and Sophie, got an ice cream at Sihanoukville's excuse for the Blue Pumpkin and got caught in a rainstorm on the beach pub ghetto. Drenched in seconds.
Notes:
A sponsored incinerator on the island for the trash, would be an idea. (Later note: they DO burn the trash off anyway).
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