Heading South

Posted 7th October 2013 by David McGuinness

After a quick morning walk along the waterfront in Phnom Penh to watch Cambodian urbanites of all ages get their exercise in – walking, playing keepy uppy with a type of shuttle-cock, on public exercise machines racing the river or practising Tai Chi or something similar – I packed my bag and was met at my hotel by my guide for the next couple of days, Vet and my driver, Meang. We drove through the heavy traffic of Phnom Penh before finally leaving the city and taking national highway three towards Kampot, a town in the South famous for its pepper. Our first stop was a temple called Ta Phrom, not to be confused with the Angkor temple of the same name. The temple was beautiful with no other tourists around. It was built in the late 12th and early 13thcentury by King Jayavarman VII on the site of a more ancient Khmer temple and despite some damage the temple survived both US bombs and the Khmer Rouge who damaged a Shiva linga (phallus symbol) in the main temple.

The temple catered to both Hindus and the four faces of the temple represented the four virtues in Buddhism – mercy, pity, sympathetic joy and impartiality or so Vet explained. We wandered across to another temple, the Yeay Peau, with a small following in tow. The level of English of some of the local kids that followed us around suggested that it does get some tourists in the dry season. Yeay Peau is situated in a modern and active pagoda and the kids played a sort of bowling game with their flip flops, evidently for money, and so the entry of a tourist was only a temporary distraction as the game it seemed held a far greater allure. Nearby we also wandered over to a beautiful lake where you can apparently hire out little floating pavilions, a nice option for a picnic perhaps…

After about a 30 minute drive from these temples we arrived at the base of Phnom Chisor. The temple is at the top of some three hundred wide steps (one step up and two steps flat for each physical step). Again there were no tourists around but there were plenty of locals. At the top there is a modern monastery, where I entered to find the slightly bizarre sight of a monkey grooming a kitten. I leaned a little too close for a picture and the monkey got a little aggressive and was quickly chased out (temporarily) by the locals. The views from the top were superb and the path down leads directly to two other temples, Sen Thmoi and Sen Ravang (along a straight line pointing towards the Angkor complexes).

We continued on – stopping for a little stuffed frog en route – through Kampot to a small property just outside Kep, surrounded by pepper plantations, and with a lovely building and small pool, the perfect place to relax for the evening.