I spent the weekend in Kep, which means for two glorious days we did nothing but swim and eat in grimy seaside joints where the crabs were plucked straight from the water and fried up with Kampot pepper and down beers and wander for miles without being offerered a single moto ride and stare at stars and stumble down pitch black streets without always almost being rundown and, and, and. It really was that perfect. Take every great beach town and blend and get rid of all the people and you’ve got Kep. Which probably isn’t always perfect but in this case was the exact right antidote to the endless ebb of Phnom Penh.
Kep used to be a swank beach resort which was ravaged by the KR and later by starving looters (thanks, guidebook history!) and so one fairly prominent feature of the place is its blasted-out chateaus. All along the road are these formerly grand houses, things plucked straight from the French Riviera, which are just shells now—moldy and overgrown, holes for windows, walls and floors and nothing else. Some have been co-opted as scant shelters, here’s a kid bathing in front, there’s a woman beating out laundry. But mostly they’re just slowly and lifelessly falling down. But it’s all somehow not too mournful. They’re hulking and silent and just add to the beauty of the place.
As for Kep itself, there isn’t much of a town, just a smattering of guest houses up and down the road and fairly far apart. There’s a crab market made up of a string of shack restaurants adjutting the water and a half-mile down or so there’s a public beach which is flanked by hammock stands where you can rent one for a nap and a little further down is a statue of a naked fisherman’s wife and that’s about the extent of Kep. For a few dollars you can take a boat to Rabbit Island, the biggest of the dozens of islands between Kep and Vietnam, which has a more expansive beach and more beachside hammocks and a jungle with footpaths, but no roads. Think Gilligan’s and add some places to buy seafood. There’s all sorts of farm animals running around—while we bobbed in the water a herd of baby goats nudged at our clothes. (There’s lots of those in Kep too, when we walked around all day, we got adopted by a dog who followed us and stuck with us through swimming and hammock nap time and everything until we got in a tuk-tuk and had to leave her.)
I could go on about Kep for way too long, so I’ll stop here. And photos TK.
