sabato 2 novembre 2013

Bicycle adventures

Hello again everyone, I think this is the first time I post two days in a row... this calls for celebrating! :-P
Woke up relatively early today, around 6:30am, plans were to visit a cavern temple in a nearby town but I really didn't want to pay a tuk tuk driver 15$ for the round trip so I left as early as I could with my bike, having no idea of how long the trip would take me. The town was about 28km away, which in Italy would have meant getting there in about an hour, bit in Cambodia travelling by bike is way slower, both because of the conditions of the roads and those of the bicycles. All in all it took me about 1:45h to get to Kampong Trach, and another 15min to reach the actual temple, situated in a beautiful towering limestone formation. I'd say the highest point was at about 150m and of course I had to climb it! The view from the top was amazing, I doubt I could have found a better spot in all the region...
The caves instead weren't deep at all, I'd be surprised if they reached 20m. Maybe the lower flooded levels went a bit deeper, but there's no way to know...
Inside the caves I found a collection of religious statues and altars, mixed with numerous natural formations (stalactites and stalagmites), which blended together very well. One of the tunnels lead to a spectacular opening in the middle of the mountain from which a network of other caverns departed. It was an amazing place and I'm really glad to have visited it, even though it took ages to go and come back with the bike and my butt was  definitely not happy at the end of it.
Once back in Kep I hopped on a bus to Kampot, the province capital. This town is slightly bigger than all the others I visited (excluding Phnom Penh of course) and  seems to be a known tourist destination, especially for backpackers. I checked in a guesthouse called Bohdi's Villa, run by an Australian couple with their 3 and 6 year olds. The house is amazing and I love how they let trees grow all over the pace, on their terrace and the roof. It probably isn't the best choice for maintenance but it sure looks nice. I'll probably stay here 2 or 3 nights before moving on...
They're gonna have a"Halloween recovery party" tonight and I'm helping them set up the decorations side in to tied to go for a ride around town... 
Gotta get back to painting masks now...
Until tomorrow!

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