Kep, a quiet part in the coast of Cambodia.

We took the bus to Kep. Phnom Penh city seemed to never end and it took more than an hour to leave the city, but then it was a non-stop string of settlements, and only after two and half hours in the bus we start seeing green landscapes. We arrived to Kep after four hours by bus. Our hotel at the feet of a green mountain was state of the art and modest enough. It was extremely different from the blast of the capital.

We hired a scooter for four days and headed straight to the local beach, which is the best and the only beach in Kep. A beautiful white sand beach in a rather murky water due to water streams around. One of the things that one can see everywhere - like in Vietnam - is the amount of trash everywhere you lay your eyes on, specially plastic. It has got to a point where people just don't see the plastic, and nature now has to share its space with mounting amounts of plastic. So it was shocking seeing recent plastic disposal at the seashore. Eventually one gets used to it and, like locals, starts not seeing it. Sunset was beautiful though, and we would continue coming every day to watch it.

Next day we drove to the Bokor Mountain Park, to see the old French colonial buildings which were used during the Vietnamese war with the Khmers in 1979, completely derelicted. These old French colonial buildings abound around Cambodia and can be seen in various towns. We found no pepper plantations in Bokor, so we drove back to Kampot, looking for that beautiful riverside town where, according to guidebooks, one wants to linger around the colonial houses turned into guesthouses and restaurants. I found Kampot rather unatractive, with a not very desirable backpacker crowd hanging around and lots of locals with street business trying to make a living. Yes, there were old buildings, but the trashy signs catering for backpackers did kill any appeal, and the rest of the city was very neglected and unpretty. So we headed back to Kep for the crab market, and there we had delicious seafood. 

People in this part of the coast are delightfuly sweet, joyful, laidback and polite, and the tourists and expats seem to be well behaved at least behave in a more upmarket way, so we felt like Kep was a great place to spend some time.

Cambodia food doesn't rival that of its neighbors, but then they have amok. Fish amok, crab amok, it is really delicious, and can have different flavors, as sometimes it's cooked on coconut, or pineapple.

So we decided to stay in Kep for the rest of our stay and enjoy the tranquil atmosphere of this gem of a town, and also to enjoy our great bungalow after a non-stop itinerary.
We went on a day trip to "rabbit island", a very quiet island with no amazing beaches but a very relaxed atmosphere that somehow made you want to linger. And on our last day in Kep we visited a pepper plantation, where I realized pepper is actually a vine not a tree, and had our last sunset at Kep beach.