We left the capital city Phnom Phen before 7 this am by bus for a few hours, our guides Alan and Cham surprised all the ladies with a rose for valentines day on the bus which was so sweet of them and we all went aaahhhhhh about. we met the support van with our bikes all ready to go at a temple area, where the locals were completely fascinated by us, our gear and even some of our skins!!!! The older local ladies were curious about some of our skins and were stroking our arms, seeing if we felt different to them! They worried about the sun on our skins, being out in the sun all day on our bikes (No English of course but lots of pointing to the sun and our arms so we understood) one of the girls showed them the miracle of sunscreen, they were amazed.
We cycled all day, taking short breaks approx every 20 kms or so, and arrived in Kampot town around 5pm, super dirty like a really bad orange fake tan job! And super sweaty and completely buggered. it was a very tough day today, but we made it! almost 90kms, our longest cycle of the tour so far. tomorrow is over 100 km and we are very nervous, it's our last cycling day tomorrow :( tough to do 2 long days back to back, but it is what it is! And this is, after all, a challenge!
The Kampot area is world renowned for its pepper corn produce (red, white and black pepper corns), and thanks to Cambodia being a French colony at one time, kampong peppercorns were used by all the best chefs in France. We have all bought some to take back with as gifts and for home, to try with our newly acquired Best of Friends restaurant recipe book (where we ate last night). At dinner tonight we had the local specialty, Kampot Pepper Crab which everyone else said was delicious, I personally don't suck on legs so gave it a skip!!!!
Relatively early to bed tonight, by 9pm as we have really really hard and long day in the saddle tomorrow.
