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.