Caves, Lakes, and the World's Best Pepper
Today I booked a Guide & Tuk-Tuk driver, Seth, to show me around Kep and Kampot.
The roughly 50 km, 5-hour tour went way off the beaten path, down tiny backroads into the countryside – a great way to see the area!
I was a little hesitant about doing a full day's tour in a tuk-tuk, but the Cambodian ones resemble Moped-drawn carriages and one sits surprisingly comfortable inside
(Just one tip: bring a scarf – there's a lot of road dust that gets kicked up into your lungs along the route).
By the way, Seth works out of Kampot, but covers both provinces – I can highly recommend his services: the entire day ran me $40 for a 1:1 tour that was well worth it!
He can be contacted via Instagram, Facebook/Messenger or WhatsApp under +855966946137
The first stop was a rather spontaneous one: Seth stopped to show me how the local farmers carve dug-out canoes from palm tree stems. The stems need to soaked in water (to kill all bugs inside) and charred (to waterproof them) ... These boats are then used on the local lakes and canals for fishing.
We passed through multiple villages, and cows, and chickens ... and was was happy to see a number of schools (filled with laughing children that all want to say hello to the foreigner).
Seth explained that his kids (a girl, aged 8 and a boy aged 4) were an organisational challenge, as he (or rather his old father) tend to their 4 cows at 5:00, the bring the kids off to school at 7am. ... but now is when it gets complicated: school goes from 7:00 until 12:00, then the kids need picking up for lunch, then back in school at 13:00 until 14:30 – so it only works with a network of family, with nephews, grandparents, Mom and Dad all sharing the responsibility.
First official stop on the tour: the temple inside the cave...
Phnom Chhngok Cave Temple
link to location on google maps here
Also spelled Phnom Chhnork, it means crooked hill. Inside a cave here is a Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva that was built during the 7th Century, during the times this region was still the Kingdom of Funan (so, yes, pre-Angkorian).
Up and up the steps we climbed (Hindu temples LOVE to make you climb steps as a way of showing the challenges and difficulties of life), and from the top, the view over the valley was spectacular!
At the entrance to the cave, a rock formation takes on the shape of an elephant with a bit of imagination, you see the true, the head, the ear, the body, the tail ... kinda like looking for a bunny rabbit in the clouds.
Secret Lake (Brateak Krola)
link to location on google maps here
The Lake is beautiful – the secret isn't.
The Secret Lake is a man-made lake or dam, that grows and shrinks with the seasons.
The dam and the reservoir was built using slave labour (prisoners and captured villagers) during the Khmer Rouge rule, Seth explained, and the thousands that died during its construction were hidden in a mass-grave that was later flooded by the waters .. .
So: that's the secret. Didn't say it would be a pretty secret.
La Plantation
link to location on google maps here
No Kampot without Kampot Pepper. Famous and loved by cooks all over the world as the best pepper on the planet. Organically grown, hand harvested ... even with its own DIC ... so like Champagne, only Kampot pepper is Kampot pepper.
Pepper (and other spices) plantations were big under French Protectorate Rule, but the plantations were destroyed and the pepper fields burned to the ground by the Khmer Rouge (by the way, also mulberry trees and silk looms were destroyed, as anything produced that was not immediate food .. anything of value created ... was a symbol of capitalism).
It was again the French to the rescue 30 years later: they rebuilt the plantations - and La Plantation is the largest. Employees there get a monthly salary, their kids go to a full day school on the plantation, their families receive a medical health insurance package. All employees can also opt for evening english and french language courses as well.
Long Pepper?
First stop on the Pepper tour was Long Pepper – a native plant of Indonesia.
Its fruit is filled with tiny seeds, but usually the entire fruit is used. This is the sweet pepper that reminds you of spice cake, Spekalooos cookies, and the like.
True Kampot Pepper
Then came the real stuff - the true pepper. The grapes grow green, which can be harvested and used as fresh green peppercorns, or salted, in which case they turn black ("salted black").
The berries then turn orange to red (April/May) when the harvest of red, white and pure black begins: red is freshly dried, white is red, just blanched and the skin removed, and black is red that has been dried in the sun.
Other fruits, Herbs and Spices
Along the way, we also passed Morning Glory (a very popular vegetable in Asian cuisine), Chilli, Jackfruit, Mango, Lemongrass (Citronella), Pomelo, Papaya, more Mango, ...
and of course coconuts at every corner!
Salt fields
link to location on google maps here
Last Stop of the day were the salt fields of Kep – fields flooded with sea water, then left in the sun to evaporate.
There were 15 fields to a row, times 1000 rows – each field takes a team of 2-3 people about 30 minutes to harvest. Since every other field is harvested, then washed, flooded with clean water, then refolded with salt water, the region is left with a beautiful chequerboard effect.
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