“Veranda”, “Vana”, “The Beach House”, “Le Bout de Monde”…. Names of beach houses, bungalows, and little seaside resorts in Kep, Cambodia, a place where luxury villas once housed the vacationing elite of Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge wiped them out, leaving only the abandoned villas to crumble, serving today as evidence of the country’s economic and political descent.
Last weekend I too vacationed once again, this time to the Kampot (pepper) province, south of Cambodia along the Gulf of Thailand for some much-needed rest-time, away from the traffic and chaotic noises of Phnom Penh. A couple of American girls
and one Brit, Tim, Jess and I all took part in this mini-exodus about 4 hours by mini-van, south of the city. It still amazes me how relatively small Cambodia is and how one can still find mountains, beaches, and temples just a few hours away, depending on the direction one wishes to travel. The scenes along the way are the same as those I encountered on my cycling trip to the northwest: agricultural fields, cattle moving slowly (sometimes across the road), raised houses lining the one road south, and people—kids running along the road or bathing with buckets of water, old women crouched down staring out at those who pass their drink stalls, men gathered around television sets, farmers plowing fields, and bicycles and mottos gathering speed and swerving on to join the traffic.
When I arrived at Veranda to our comfortable $15/person a night mosquito net covered bungalows on a hillside overlooking the sea, I immediately felt guilty- transported back into a time where only the privileged are allowed to take time off from the grind of the real world. A nervous Khmer staff waited on us for lunch, served us mint-chocolate chip and passion-fruit ice cream, brought us bottles of red and white wine for dinner and placed baskets of bread and chocolate-croissants at our breakfast table. The guests at the Veranda were all foreigners, something you take notice of right away. Here we were, NGO workers, English-Teachers, Volunteers (and well one big question mark- me), staring out at the beautiful sunsets and
sunrises, in the lap of what Khmers would consider luxury, as we took a break from proposals, programs, school curriculums and laptops to read poems by Hafiz, the latest in Southeastern Global news, criticisms on foreign aid and discuss little curiosities we’d come across when living and traveling in SE Asia.
When we weren’t reading we hiked up a small hill and spotted monkeys, hiked downhill and invited ourselves to the only pool at one of the beach houses, lounged about at the “Sailing Club”, took artistic photographs of Khmer boaters, and ate crab, fish and squid at the crab-market. Our second day we took a ferry over to “Rabbit Island”-- I’ll admit, I was kind of hoping the shape of it would look like a crouching rabbit, but no, it pretty much just looked like a long skinny island without rabbit-ears. Here we continued about our lounging- this time on straw mats placed atop flat wooden structures along the rocky sands. In essence, Rabbit Island was our private refuge from the poverty and demands of a country that at least I was only beginning to understand. Our refuge lasted for a couple of hours until we had to retreat beneath the straw roof of one of the tiny island restaurants as we watched the dark clouds roll in, swallow up surrounding islands, and the rains pour down for the usual mid-day deluge. Sipping our iced-coffees with sweetened condensed milk mixed in at the bottom (umm it is quite probable that my favorite thing in Cambodia is this “Vietnamese” coffee... Hands down, beats any Starbucks creation) we waited for the rains to pass before venturing out again to enjoy the afternoon sun and bathe in the warm waters.
Sunday afternoon we returned to Phnom Penh but not before stopping in Kampot to enjoy lunch and moist carrot cake at Epic Arts, a small café devoted to promoting the arts and culture as a learning and expression tool for the handicap, our one last indulgence before entering the real world once again.
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