TravellingStrom

I was a bit late to rise this morning as I felt a bit seedy, it must have been something I ate last night! But, not to worry, I grabbed a quick brekky then hit the sack for another hours kip 🙂 After lunch down at the Rusty Keyhole of wok fried noodles with chook, I was feeling a bit more active and sorted some plans out. I wanted to do some more Geocaching, there are 3 in this area and I have already done one yesterday, there is one in Kep and in fact I was within 500m of it yesterday but no chance of getting to it on the bus. Then while I was reading up on the other cache near me I spotted a 4th one, but no wonder I had not seen it on my GPS, it was a multi cache and these generally take up a lot of time which I don’t usually have. I read up on it and it sounded quite fun. For a start it was up on Bokor Mountain, I don’t need an excuse to go and ride that again, but this was also placed late last year and never been found, so a First To Find was on offer, I might give that a go as I had all the time in the world 🙂

So, my plan was to rent a scooter and go and visit this hermit nun cache today, then in the morning, ride the scoot to Kep on a totally crap road to pick up that one down there and in the afternoon ride my own bike up the mountain. And that plan was enacted around 2.30pm, the hottest part of the day as I hired a scoot and went for a ride to find the One Sor Sight

The literacy rate in Cambodia is not very high, so there are not too many signs around, but directions are quite easily given. Nearly every major intersection has a roundabout and that also contains a statue, so in this case I go past the salt farmers, head to the Durian and keep on going 🙂 But, first I need to return to the shop where my cable is hopefully being repaired near the market. I found the shop quite easy, and the chap had cut the end off my old lead and used a new plug and extra cable to make repairs. I tested it out and my music was back, yeehaa 🙂 The strange part was the price, I thought he said 30,000 Riels, which is about $7.30 and I was OK with that price, but when I brought out a $10 note he said no, no, 3,000 Riels, only 75c, crikey Mort!! He could have ripped me off, but because he didn’t I gave extra just because he was honest and did a good job 🙂 In Oz, that new plug would be worth a few bucks just by itself, let alone the labour.

I had tunes and headed off for the hill called Sor, the usual potholed paved road and then an extremely bumpy holed dirt track led into the base of the hill where I could park the bike. It was only about 7km from town, but 3 of those were crap dirt!

As luck would have it there were a couple of tourists on tredlies here who were ahead of me climbing the track, they are either muggles or cachers 🙂 Did I mention is was hot, well it was bloody HOT! I knew the log said do this in the morning and of course it is now the hottest part of the day, but I took it easy with plenty of stops to get my breathe back. My legs were glad of the breaks as well, this track was steep.

I did catch up with the muggles who were from England, and after they started back down the hill I climbed the last 10 metres and found a shady spot and also found the cache 🙂

After signing the log I walked up to the hermits place up top but did not get too close, just to the front entrance shrine before coming back down and taking some more photos of the view, very nice, but did I mention HOT! 😆

As you might be able to see, they are pushing a road extension through towards the coast. After a rest, I took my time getting down where I was bailed up by some dogs at the bottom . There is a shanty residence which has a big Buddha with a Naga head covering there.

Once I returned to the guest house and got the aircon and fans working I had a long cold shower, did I mention HOT? I then logged my cache find and I then had an email a short time later saying the cache owner was in town and would I like to meet up. The end result was that I would go to Kep in the morning and then drop by for a chat and a cold drink before hitting the multi cache up the mountain. I went back to the old trusty Rusty Keyhole and this time gave the ribs a trial for dinner. These have been picked twice for the best ribs in Cambodia and Joe Baglin had mentioned them to me in Phnom Penh. They have a food challenge here, if you can eat the 1.5kg ribs and all the potatoes, you get a free desert, eat it in less than 23 minutes and beat the record, it is free 🙂 This was just half a kg and was big enough for me. One thing I was planning on doing was print out some winners and losers of the ribs challenge on my printer. I tried today by the printer has failed, it is only printing half a picture, even when I changed the ink and paper supplies 😦 Oh well, for $79 you can’t expect too much I guess! I will have to dump it and buy another I guess! After dinner I had my favourite desert, you beauty 🙂 The owner Kristian had bought two bottles which happened to be in a local shop, one of them for me. I will take this with me when I go through Thailand.

Kristian was crook tonight so only his missus Com was here. I only had a couple of drinks as tomorrow would probably be a tough one if today was anything to go by.

Cheers from Krabpot Kampot
TravellingStrom