Day 23 - Pick a peck of pepper

16:00
There’s an insane electrical storm around 03:30 which wakes me up. It sounds like it’s right outside my terrace door. I pop my head out to check, and yes - it’s right outside my terrace door. Some incredibly loud thunder, some incredibly bright lightning. After an hour, I decide to try and get back to sleep. It doesn’t happen. The thunder is SO loud that it drowns out the sound of my headphones. The lightning is SO bright that I can sense the change through my eyelids. I cover my head with a pillow. It blocks out the light and thunder, which is great. It stymies my ability to breath, which is less so. I finally drift off again around 05:30 when the storm starts to subside, and sleep through to my 09:00 alarm.

The rain has cleared, and there’s a steamy atmosphere in the air. Felix and I head out at 11:00 to La Plantation, a Kampot Pepper farm a half hour away. We pass some roadworks, which turn out to be laying of a new road. It looks to be happening very quickly. The contraflow is a touch fucked though. The scenery we drive through is very, very pretty. We arrive to the farm, and I’m minded that it’s something of a cross between a ramshackle citrus farm I’ve visited in South Africa, and a smart vineyard in, oh - I dunno, probably South Africa as well. We set off on a free tour of the farm, and learn more than we probably ever thought we’d know about pepper - different types, different colours, different fertiliser strategies. We meet some fresh lemongrass, and learn the difference between sun drying and mechanical drying. At the end of the tour, we have a tasting of 7 different types of pepper, none of which are boring. The dried red pepper is brilliant, the salted green peppercorns sensational. The long-pepper leather (not really leather) is a headfuck, but the salted black long pepper takes the prize.

We head down the hill for some lunch, where we find a short but compelling menu, and the offer of a glass of rosé, upon which I seize. We share a green mango salad, dressed with some green Kampot Pepper - which is both understated and full-on. Felix has some fried rice, and I have perhaps my best Amok of our time in Cambodia, which is spiked with red long pepper. Awesome. After lunch, we return to the shop, and I buy more pepper than I was necessarily thinking i would buy. Oh, and some sauces. I’m not 100% sure I’m supposed to take them into Singapore, or back to the UK, but we’ll cross that bridge when it becomes a bridge.

Back at the hotel, we’ve earnt an afternoon dip. Soon, the clouds darken and the wind whips up. There’s rain brewing, and we scurry to our rooms to rest/nap/cower.

22:12
We head out at 19:00. Neither of us napped in the end, but it’s been a pretty chilled afternoon nonetheless. We head to Bistro 23 - a very French restaurant in the French Quarter. The food is staggeringly good. I have a gin and beetroot cured barracuda dish with red Kampot Pepper. It’s one of the nicest things I can remember eating in quite a while. Felix has a chicken liver parfait which is an excellent example of the genre. Our mains are also both amazing. Pork belly for me, beef cheek for Felix. We’re both acutely aware that eating this kind of European bistro food in the heart of Cambodia is a bit ridiculous, but the food is ridiculously good, so who gives a fuck? The crackling on the pork belly is in my top 3 pork belly cracklings of all time. Just sublime. Felix somehow manages a scoop of mango sorbet for dessert, and we leave less than £50 lighter. It’s a relatively pricy meal for Cambodia, but feels like incredible value.

We stop on the way home at The Green Room - described by Google as a ‘pub.’ Arriving, it’s easy to see why - there’s a pub quiz in full flow, chaired by a chap wearing an England football top. 90s Indie bands on the jukebox, winner stays on the pool table, 5 or 6 men drinking alone on high stools at the bar - most or all of whom we suspect are called Dudley. We play some fairly atrocious darts, listen to some fairly awesome music, and are accosted by the chap in the England shirt after he’s finished the quiz. His name’s Alan, he runs the bar, and he moved to Cambodia 6 years ago. He regales us with some not very interesting stories, and eventually leaves us alone. We decide to call it a night. I’ve got an early start to watch Tories cry, and Felix feels like he’s ready for a loooooong sleep. Bonne nuit!Baca lagi