Kampot

My first two days in Kampot were spent renting a motorbike and cruising around the highways trying to find the shop where my camera was stolen, my plan was to try to buy it back from whoever stole it. The first day I hap no luck finding the stop but the country side that I was riding through was absolutely beautiful so it was a very enjoyable day (aside from the fact that I was still upset over my stolen camera). On the second day I managed to find the place and tried to buy back my camera but no matter how much money I offered everyone insisted that they didn't know anything about a stolen camera. So no luck trying to retrieve my camera but at least I tried.

During my last day in Kampot I took a tour to the Boking Hill Station, a national park that contains a huge hill in it where the french built a hill station that was later turned into a casino and then abandoned. The day trip to the hill station was really a waste of time and money as the guide tried to fit too much into the day. First we looked at the abandoned King's home and then the hill station and these stops were quite good and the hill station had some fantastic views out to the ocean; however, after that we had an hour trek through the jungle (it was really just between 2 switchbacks in the road and we could always hear the road construction), a visit to a "waterfall" (there wasn't any water flowing over the waterfall during the dry season), and finally we finished the day off with a boat trip down the river back to Kampot. The worst part of the trip though was learning that the government had sold the national park land to a rich guy from Vietnam and that person was starting to develop the hill top into a fancy 5 star resort. It was really sad to hear our guide talk about the plans for the resort and the amount of construction that was going to destroy the national park, and worst of all he was really happy about it. He thought that it would bring lots more tourism and thus money to his country and no matter how hard I tried to convince him how bad it really is he wouldn't hear any of it. The worst part is that the government in Cambodia is willing to sell of the entire country it seems and as a result soon none of it will be owned by any Cambodians. Apparently all of the islands off the coast have already been sold, mostly to Russians I think.

After my disappointing trip to the Bokor Hill Station I decided that I had seen everything that there was to in Kampot (there really wasn't much else there, although Kampot is famous for its pepper) and decided to head over to Sihanoukville the next day. So more to come on Sihanoukville soon (maybe even later today).