Sweet Sisters Cafe

Good morning! Especially to two sweet sisters of mine. Thinking about you tonight at dinner. Love you!

Morning run ain't so bad

I think I like it here

Moto'ed around the island (litrally, all the way around) today to get a lay of the land. So much to explore here!

Bought a mango and a papaya for lunch and took it to the beach, accompanied by tunes from a $4 rechargeable portable speaker I picked up at Central Market in PP. Took a nice long swim and read on the beach for the rest of the afternoon.

Post shower, took off on the moto again in search of some dinner. Stopped at an open air market, and I bought chicken breast on a stick and a beer for my appetizers. Aaron picked up some fried squid and fish ball kebabs. Moved on to an authentic Thai noodle soup street stand/restaurant. Back to the open air market to try some unfamiliar sweet-looking things like a thick pancake with coconut filling, green tea shake, and a taco-looking thing with egg, coconut, and raisins.

So full! Will be turning in early to take a barefoot run on the beach in the morning.

P.S. A whole post dedicated to my love affair with @Coffee-time is forthcoming. Plans to visit tomorrow (will keep the streak of going each day since we arrived) and ask the very nice propriator for a brief Thai lesson.

Made it to Thailand!

Can't believe my time in Cambodia is already over. After a tuk tuk, plane, multiple buses, some taxis, a train and a ferry, made it to Koh Samui this afternoon. Just sat down for some iced coffee because walking around got too hot this afternoon.

Tomorrow we're going to rent a moto so we can explore more. We are near Lamui Beach (see pictures), and hope to see more soon!

In Thailand so far, the biggest differences are:

- majority of cars over motos on the road
- there's public transportation
- the tuk tuks look funny
- the language and currency are confusing again (just as I was getting the hang of Khmer!)
- the sidewalks are sidewalks, not extensions of shops
- less dusty
- a bit cooler
- a LOT greener and more lush
- the people are so friendly! (Shout out to our new friend Richard.)

Lots of love to Cambodia, my home for the past two+ months. Thanks for taking care of me and sharing your people with me. Will always have a place in my heart.

More posts on Thailand and belated ones from Cambodia yet to come, dear readers!

Misadventures in Kep

As I've said, Kep was my favorite Cambodian weekend getaway. The sunsets over the beach were beautiful, our treehouse was spectacular, and the food was unique and delicious. It wasn't without its mishaps, however. First, Aaron's phone was either lost or stolen somewhere between Kampot and the Jasmine Valley Resort. When we had wifi and charged devices (the eco resort only had D/C outlets in our room), we banded together and tried to locate it, to no avail. Another med student had her iPhone stolen in Sihanouk Ville, so this was not an unfamiliar occurrence. The phone was retired, had a cracked screen, and was purposefully brought as a backup phone, so Aaron was a good sport about its solo travels.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we rented two motos on Saturday to explore the area. We launched two expeditions: a morning session and a evening session. In between we cooled off for a short time in our treehouse. As we took off for the second chapter, we ran into a slight fuel problem. One moto made it about 500 yards farther from the other. Once we figured out what happened and found some gas, we circled back to find Colin. He was just chilling out on a bench, watching the water, knowing his buds would find him and bring gas eventually. (My family will remember a story with the punchline, "It's ok, I knew you'd come back for me.") Mishap turned great opportunity! Before we took off again, we stayed in that spot and enjoyed a beer and the setting sun.

Inspired by the Kep crabs. Thanks, wind, for the sweet mohawk. 

Note huge crab statue silhouetted in the water. 

He's always wanted to drink the sun. (I actually took this one, for once!)

Getting back to Phnom Penh introduced its own set of hiccups. It was our first real transportation mishap in Cambodia, which is pretty impressive (if I do say so myself), considering we took quite a few extracurricular trips in our time here.

You see, we were visiting Kep. The bus route drives Phnom Penh --> Kampot, then drives the final 25 minutes to Kep to drop off the remaining passengers. The hitch is (as we found out), that the bus does not pick up in Kep to go back to Phnom Penh. Even with being 45 minutes early to the bus stop, we missed our bus. Bummer! 

The unfortunate part is that 2:30pm is considered "too late in the day to drive the two hours home" in most Cambodian books. First we tried to hire a car to take us back, but $70 seemed pretty steep. Instead, we took a very bumpy, dusty tuk tuk ride from Kep to Kampot to try our luck there, even though we were told all the rides back were all full and nothing would be going back to Phnom Penh until Monday. Yikes! We were supposed to be back to the clinic on Monday morning!

Using the backpack to shield the dust.

Our tuk tuk driver gently laughed at us when he dropped us off close to the taxi stand, but we had to check anyway. Serendipitously, we were approached with an offer for ride to PP in a taxi even before we could get there! We didn't know too much, but we did know it was going to likely be a very cozy ride. We were so motivated to get home and take hot showers, extra adventure didn't phase us much. 

Mishap? We pronounce that "adventure."

Once everyone piled in, this is what the front seat looked like. The man who's head is pressed into the ceiling was driving. We had four in the back too. The very petite Khmer girl in the back next to me probably got the short straw, with three barangs taking up a lot of the space!

Keep breathing, Mom! They drive at very low speeds in Cambodia.

Pretty happy campers, despite the hiccups.

Two of the crew promptly fell asleep. Well deserved after a hard day's quest to get home and get back to clinic on Monday!

Without the extra twists and turns, we never would have caught this crazy sight! 

Thankfully we made it back in three pieces (one each!). I, for one, took a nice hot shower (only cold ones at the eco resort!), and fell into my uber-comfortable bed, feeling happy, relaxed from the weekend, relieved, and victorious.

More Adventures in Kep

Sorry if you're getting bored with Kep, but I love so many of these pictures and want to share the beauty and adventure! All photo credit in this post goes to Aaron.

On Saturday night, Aaron insisted that we visit this one tree that he had seen earlier in the day around sunset. After we finished fully enjoying our running-out-of-gas misadventure (to be explained in a future post), we hit pavement with the motos and zipped over to the spot. We were treated to a second pretty amazing sunset (made prettier by Aaron's artsy mood).

I could see this hanging in a gallery somewhere.

Friends bein' friends.

Food in Kep

Kep is famous for its seafood, and specifically its crab. Everyone raves about the restaurant Kimly, which is a seafood restaurant in a strip mall-type setup along the water. However, Kimly turned out to be closed for the week, so we explored about five alternates. All the nearby restaurants appear to be pretty similar, with extremely similar menus. Each main course is about $5, and the menu includes various preparations of crab, fish, squid, pork, beef, and chicken. Some of the most famous Kep preparations is "with spices," in which your choice of protein comes in a Khmer-style curry, and "with green pepper," which is generally cooked with onions and clumps of green peppercorns still on the stalk. We decided that eating anything but seafood while in the area was probably pretty sacrilegious, so here's what my first dinner looked like:

We identified our favorite restaurant, called Kep Thmey, and went there twice. We loved the food, loved the price of the $0.80 stout beer (usually ~$1.50), loved the free pineapple for dessert they brought us, and more. We tried to order the shark on the menu here, but the fishermen hadn't caught any recently (Darn! I will just have to get my cousins to make me shark tacos when I get back!).

Pseudo-Guest Post 1

Here are some pictures of our Kep trip that Aaron and Colin took. All taken on Aaron's DSLR, most shots by Aaron, but Colin got in on the action as well. The following are some of my favorites, and you can find the whole album here. I'll feature many of the others in future posts, so all will be explained in due time. Enjoy!

The first sunset.

Waking up in our treehouse. Look at the other cool bungalows hidden in the jungle like ours!

Check out our cool chair loungers!

Our super cool bunks. The princess got the big princess bed, of course!

I think this photo really sums up the style and feel of the place.

The resort had amazingly charming little details like this all over the grounds.

Adventures in Kep

After a comfortable 2.5 hour bus ride to Kep, we bypassed the enthusiastic tuk tuk drivers offering to take us to our guesthouse, and headed down the street to the water. As we made a game plan for the evening, we watched a beautiful sunset over the Gulf of Thailand.

After the sun set, we braved the bumpy dirt road a few kilometers up to our eco resort, the Jasmine Valley. We thought the tuk tuk was going to break from the effort. It was dark when we arrived, so we didn't really know what we'd wake up to find! We set out back down the road to the crab market for dinner. I'll post pictures of the food and Aaron's shots from around the resort in later posts.

On Saturday, we woke up early in our tree house to bright sun and the sound of jungle birds. We ate a luxurious complimentary breakfast, and rented two motos for the day. Once they were delivered, we headed back down into town to see what we could find.

First dip in the Gulf of Thailand. The water was clean and very warm. This shot is from the
water looking back towards Kep Beach.

The one street food I couldn't resist

The blogosphere very nearly didn't get a picture of this since it was gone so quickly. A friend and I made a pretty quick stop by Central Market after clinic today, and couldn't help stopping to try one of these. They are essentially pancake sandwiches with chocolate inside. YUM! With other listed flavors such as blueberry and honey, I might just be back for more!

P.S. Kep post(s) coming soon!

Plans for the weekend, and my apologies

Sorry for the radio silence! The internet in our apartment has been shoddy for the past week. It's extra irritating that it will work for about 25 minutes after we get back from the clinic, and play dead for the rest of the night and next morning. Our best troubleshooting points to a problem proximal to our router, so every trick in the book (including throwing the router at the wall) wouldn't fix the problem. Tried to go to the apartment office to try to rectify the issue, but alas, they open at 8, when we have to leave for the clinic by 7:30. Boo.

Thankfully, I'm not suffering nearly as much as my blog is! Fridays tend to be much slower than the rest of the week in terms of surgery, but I'm working on a bunch of other projects (to be explained at length in future posts), so I'll just leave you with this morsel.

The group made a somewhat last-minute decision to take a weekend trip to Kep. It's a town on the river pretty close to Kampot, where we went two weekends ago. We got a recommendation to stay at the Jasmine Valley Resort from a good resource, and our group is splurging on a room that is said to have phenomenal views. You can check out the website, see our complimentary breakfast menu (bottomless coffee!), and see a short video tour of our "Treehouse!"

Kep is famous for its seafood, and most notably its local crab. We will be visiting Kimly Restaurant, which we were told is the absolute best. A meal or two this weekend will likely look something like this:

From TripAdvisor

In other news, I've booked some flights. I leave for Thailand two weeks from tomorrow, April 6th, and fly home to California April 17th. About two more weeks in Cambodia, two weeks in Thailand, then back home (it will always feel wrong to go east to get there!).

Happy Friday! Anyone else have weekend plans?

Odds and Ends

Here are some miscellaneous photos that have been piling up on the blog back burner. So without further ado, I give you the first installment of Odds and Ends.

Especially in honor of my sister who works for Beam, our bar's only possession: Jim Beam Black. Convenient that it's only $14 in Cambodia.

Cobra/scorpion liquor that was opened at a BBQ. 

Turns out that a cobra eating a scorpion tastes like rotten fish. Yuck!

Raspberry margarita. Now we're talking!

I had a request from my dear cousin for more food pictures. Here you go, T-sa!

Kampot Recap

It turned out to be a short but sweet trip to Kampot. When I arrived, my friends who had gone to Kampot the day before were still coming down off the mountain. When they arrived, we ate at a restaurant called Epic Arts, which employs and welcomes deaf and disabled people. The food was delicious and it was a very cool place. 

Next we took a lengthy but refreshing (in that "it's nice to sweat a lot every once in a while" way) trek to our bungalow that was a few kilos out of town.

We made it! Colin and Aaron in the loft. 

Our very own bungalow.


Girls bedroom downstairs, boys upstairs.

The bungalow next door. They had the hammock version.