2 Days in Kep

On Monday, I took the bus south from Phnom Penh to the sleepy little seaside village of Kep on the Gulf of Thailand. In Kep, there are about a dozen hotels/guesthouses, a small beach, a small national park, and a crab market. And that's about it. I came to Kep to relax after the chaos of Phnom Penh, swim in a warm pool, and do some hiking in Kep National Park.

I got up the day after arriving ready to start my trek. I knew that the day was scheduled to be hot and steamy, so at 7:30am I made my way to the Led Zep cafe at the start of the trail that circumnavigates the park. The cafe is a tiny one, the only one in the park, and is solely responsible for the more than 150 trail markers and signs in the park. They also supposedly serve a very refreshing lime juice for $0.75. As the cafe did not open until 9am, I started hiking. Now, the night before, the front desk at my hotel told me that the hike would take anywhere from 4 to 6 hours to complete, and I would have to climb for the first hour and a half to get to the summit. Alright, I thought, let's do this....







....35 minutes later I reached the summit....huh....it's not like I had gotten lost, there was literally one trail to follow.  And, yes, I'm certain it was the summit because a big yellow sign told me so. And it's not like I was running it, or even moving very quickly. What I was doing was more akin to a mosey, a meander if you will. I checked my distance. 2.5 kilometers. Okay, 35 minutes seemed about right. I bit perplexed I continued onward. Two and a half hours later I was back at the Led Zep cafe drinking freshly squeezed lime juice and asking the owner why the hotel had told me 4 to 6 hours. "Most people very slow," he said. And then he told me that if I backtracked about a mile or so, I could pick up the best interior trail hike in the whole park. The Nun's Path to Sunset Rock. He said it was a couple of miles and would take me about an hour and a half. Sweet.

Off I went. When I got to the trail head, I looked straight up, skeptical. The path looked really narrow and appeared almost vertical. I looked around a few times and considered did I really want to do this? What the hell, I thought. I spent the better part of the next hour and 15 minutes cursing, panting, sweating, and trying not to fall head first into the dense Cambodian jungle. What he had failed to mention was that the trail broke down as follows: 1 hour and 15 minutes up, and 15 minutes down. That fact may have changed my mind about the trail.

















By the way, about three quarters of the way up the Nun's Path were...wait for it...nuns. Bunches of them living up there. Living with some really angry dogs none of whom wanted to be my friend.

Another by the way, my hotel also told me that I would see "abundant wildlife" in the park, which turned out to be exactly one monkey and five cows.

I returned back home in the afternoon with a big decision to make. Did I want to hang out at the Garden Pool or the Infinity Pool? Also, what time did I want to get a massage? And that about covers the rest of my time in Kep.

Today I head to a town along the base of the Elephant Mountains called Kampot. My guesthouse there supposedly makes the best pizza in all of Cambodia. Stay tuned for the verdict.
P.S. Two mosquito bites, no souvenirs. Things are going well.