Thursday 27th March
The guy from the 'Wild Orchid Guesthouse' through which we had booked the day trip around the surrounding area picked us up from our guesthouse at 08.00. We had woken up to the sound of rain lashing down outside and the sight of dark clouds covering the hills of the Bokor National Park, the place we were headed to for the day. We were fairly optimistic that it would clear up before we left; based on previous experience, these downpours usually wash themselves out after a short enough time. Our prediction came true, thankfully, and we took our seats in the pick-up truck (Maria and I bagged the seats inside the truck, leaving some of the others in the group to face the trip with the threat of rain hovering over their heads for the entire journey).
After a bit more waiting about than was necessary, we passed through the entrance to the Bokor National Park. The heavy downpour earlier in the day had turned the red earth into a slippery dirt track, and it was slow moving for the first couple of kilometres. Once we got going it was fine, and we made our way up the side of the hill.
The first point of interest was a couple of delapidated buidlings that used to be the former holiday home of the Cambodian king. It wasn't particularly interesting (it was surprisingly small) and the mist and clouds obscured the views of the plateau and the delta below. We moved on to the summit of the hill to the now abandoned Bokor hill station. In the 1920s, the French built a large hotel and church as a holiday retreat for members of the elite in their community, and which was occupied in some form or other for about fifty years. It is an interesting place which has an eerie feel to it, the mist that rises up and over the landscape certainly adds a spooky ambiance to the place. We had lunch in the grounds of the abandoned hotel before making a move back down the hill.
We stopped about half way down the hill and went trekking through the forest there for about an hour. We couldn't help but feel that this exercise merely served as a 'filler', so they could sell the tour as a day-long tour and therefore get more money out of us. There was nothing to it except normal forest, and we walked from one point on the hillside road to another. However, it turned out to be a lot more eventful than anticipated. It was quite an enjoyable hour as I got to see Maria slip and slide down the muddy slopes in a pair of Crocs sandles; it was kind of like watching a drunk person stagger across an ice rank that had been scattered with banana skins and ball-bearings! A Belgian girl thought that a hook worm had burrowed its way into her leg, although the chances were that it was nothing more than a leech that had been flicked away. Unsurprisingly, she didn't hang about for too long after, taking the first opportunity to go to the nearest hospital to get it checked out.
After this shortest of treks, we drove to the riverside and took a boat along the Teuk Chou River, back to Kampot. It was actually very scenic, and the images of people living off the river provided an almost stereotypical view of life in this part of Asia: kids swimming, men pushing their boats and fishing, women washing clothes. Even though we were just a bunch of voyeuristic tourists in a boat, pretty much every single person waved and said hello to us as we passed. This indicated just how warm and welcoming the people of Cambodia are, and I felt that they set themselves apart from their neighours, who themselves were friendlier than the average country that you are likely to visit.
We got back to Kampot at 17.30, reasonably satisfied with the trip, but certain that it wasn't worth the $20 that we had paid for it. We had met a few people on the trip that day and we all met up for dinner that evening at the same restaurant we had eaten in the night before. We had another very good meal but we didn't hang about too late, and we got back to the hotel at about 22.00.
