{"id":3158,"date":"2026-03-17T11:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T11:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aerowalsh.com\/cr\/?p=3158"},"modified":"2026-03-21T17:55:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T17:55:19","slug":"mon-16th-mar-countryside-to-kampot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/?p=3158","title":{"rendered":"Mon 16th Mar – Countryside to Kampot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Even just the sight of this gives me unpleasant shivers. Homestay is not my thing, and heaven knows I’ve tried enough of them this holiday. Given this tour is predominantly retired women, all lights are off by 9.30pm. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The guesthouse is chosen for its traditional Cambodian style. The open downstairs area helps regulate temperature and accommodates animals. We drive past a lot of these types of houses, often with a combination of hammocks, dining tables, poultry and cattle underneath. It reminds me a bit of Housey in Blackheath.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A very long bus ride today to a Southern coastal town called Kampot, nearly 7 hours. Along the way the tour guide has a depressing chat about how four of his nine siblings have died.
In happier chat, the Other Trader Lady starts and finishes Fight Club (from my used collection). She gets very excited and involved in the plot.
When we arrive in town, we all pass a bookshop and there’s a consensus decision to visit. I get consulted on appropriate books to purchase by the ladies. OTL even buys Shantaram on my recommendation (big commitment, 900 pages). OTL says that I have encouraged everyone in the group to read more, and that going to secondhand bookshops will be a goal for her when she gets home. Pride beams out of me like lightning bolts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A lot of utes drive along with their cabs pitched up at the sky in all different angles. The owners mess around with the suspension on the car so that when it is full of stuff like coconuts it will sit straight. Some look so absurdly uneven it looks as though like the front two tyres are flat.
We don’t get many toilet stops on this long drive because the most common petrol station is owned by Thailand, and these branches have been closing because Cambodians refuse to purchase from them as a result of the war.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Makeshift swallow ‘farms’ are common. They are converted roof tops of random high buildings and the owners will harvest the birds nest for sale. The largest market is China and many of these ‘farms’ are Chinese owned.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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No time for rules, always time for aircon.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Kampot is a coastal town highly regarded for its pepper, seafood and durian. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A river snakes through the town, opening up eventually to the ocean. It’s a popular domestic tourist destination. It’s Cambodian Port Douglas.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The afternoon is spent on a sunset cruise around the river. There was the promise of fireflies but none buzz their little tooshes tonight.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The sun ends another Cambodian day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Party time after sunset.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Bright Lights, Big Seahorse City.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A nighttime alleyway class. I remember in Laos at the little English meet and greet we went to, I asked one of the Laotian students what he was learning in his favourite class, Business. He said, “to buy and then sell and then buy and sell again”.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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I am finding at the end of most days that I am pretty tired. They are either big travels days or big activity days, and all are hot. This is making my enthusiasm for dinner fall flat. So I choose something easy and close. Pizza.
As I sit down and pick up my menu, the large white man probably in his sixties keels over the counter where he is trying to settle the bill and faints. He crashes into a table and cuts his head. When he comes to, he starts vomiting and a small amount of blood is smeared over his neck. It’s difficult to know what to do. When he’s lucid enough I ask repeatedly about hospital but he says he doesn’t want to go there, just wants to go back to his hotel. I know nothing about hospitals here and he is clear that he doesn’t want to go… So I order and pay for a tuk-tuk and make sure it’s going to his accommodation…
And then I order dinner.
I am starting to feel ready to go home to Australia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seaside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thailand-laos-cambodia-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3158"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3182,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3158\/revisions\/3182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}