Kampot day 1

Last night, I briefly met one of the girls in my dorm. She said her and a friend were riding motorbikes up to a local site, Bokor Hills in the morning if I wanted to join.
This morning, I got up at 8 and she said they were leaving in 10 minutes. I nearly said no, but changed my mind and quickly got ready. I'm so glad I did as I had such a fun day!
We drove (we, as in I was a passenger princess and the other two drove haha) out of town, along the main road then up into Preah Monivong Bokor National Park. It wasn't quite what I imagined when I heard 'national park', but it was very lovely. It was a winding road up through a jungle-like forest. None of us had done any research so we didn't know what to expect. So when we saw monkeys we were ALL very excited. For about 20 minutes of the drive, there were monkeys sitting on posts, in the road, on the crash barrier, in the trees, everywhere! There were also so many babies clinging on to their mum's, which was absolutely adorable. At one point, we slowly drove past a wall, with about 20 monkeys sitting on, some playing, grooming eachother, sunbathing, feeding, sleeping, was like a clip out of a TV show. Safe to say the trip was already worth it, no matter what else we saw.
As we climbed up to higher altitude, it got noticeably colder, but as soon as you stepped off the bike and the breeze was gone, it was back to sweating.
We had a couple view point stops along the way, and also went up to see what we thought was a big Buddha. After some googling, it turns out it was a statue of Lok Yeay Mao, the Goddess of protection, and is known for keeping peace and calm in the forest and coastal provinces of Cambodia. There was a little band playing up there which was lovely.
We then arrived to the first of many buildings which made up Bokor Hill station. This refers to a collection of French colonial buildings constructed as a temperate mountain luxury resort and retreat for French soldiers in the early 1920. The buildings have long been abandoned, but makes a good tourist attraction.
As we rounded the corner and made our way further up into the mountain, a wall of fog rolled in, which made exploring the abandoned building even more a like ghost town. My favourite was an old catholic church, it looked a little like the set of a horror film. There was also an old hotel, post office, casino etc... The casino and hotel have actually been under redevelopment. The hotel is a massive luxury one accomodating 100's of people but I can't imagine it gets busy as there's nothing much up here! The casino is apparently been bought by Chinese companies that use it for money laundering 😂
We were meant to have spectacular 'end of world' (very steep cliff) views at the top, but unfortunately the weather meant you couldn't see anything! As the weather worsened, we continued and explored an 'old Cambodian village.' I couldn't quite work out if it was genuine or made for tourists, but it had some cool buildings and pagodas, so still a nice visit.
The heavens then opened up and we ran to seek shelter. The two girls I was with had a bus to catch in the afternoon so there was only so long we could wait for the rain to ease off. It cleared up a bit, so we bought ponchos and started driving. 5 minutes down the mountain and the rain had disappeared!
We saw our monkey friends on the way back down which was equally as exciting as the first time and headed back to the hostel.
Earling evening, I walked into town and joined a free walking tour at another hostel. It was run by a middle-aged Canadian dude called Jason who'd been living in Kampot since covid. He was a proper history buff, so gave us a brief but very well informed and enthusiastic run down of Cambodian history, which was super interesting, and took us round the sights around the city. He talked a lot about the spiritual side of Cambodian religion called animism. Google says it's 'the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence.' He showed us lots of different little spirit shrines, and explained that half of Buddhists in the country also practice animism. Some Monasteries strictly follow the laws of Buddha, where as others also lean into the magic side. Many people can't afford medical bills, so will go to the monks to try to rid the ill person of 'bad spirits' before going to the hospital.
Jason also pointed out that an old building next to the hostel had fake bird noises emmiting from the ceiling. This is to attract swallows to nest in the rafters as they make their nest out of saliva. Once collected, these nests can then be resold anywhere between £400-650 per kg, triple the price if they're cleaned properly, as they're considered an edible delicacy in parts of Asia!
It was a very enjoyable tour, best walking-tour I've done in ages and was very interesting to learn about the local and broader history and religion of the area.
With a couple people from the tour, we then went to a super cute vegan restaurant and got some delicious Khmer food for dinner!Lue lisää