Les Manquiers (The Mango Trees)

Three words...Kick Ass Weekend

So this past weekend I headed down to Kampot with a group of (mostly) Americans I know through various sources to a riverside guesthouse called Les Manquiers which everyone totally raves about. It was organised by my friend Steve a few weeks back and kind of sneaked up on me which was a pleasant surprise.

But before I got there, the weekend before in Phnom Penh i had some bad ice and had muscle aches, diarrhoea and headaches which laid me out for the weekend but which I mostly kicked by Monday after a sleep in and a late arrival to work. But what was really weird was that i constantly felt my world was spinning and having real balance troubles, tripping over, running into doors that kinda thing (hilarious i know!). So i went down to Sihanoukville AGAIN for work, drank lots of beer, ate lots of seafood but that didn't seem to cure it...So i took Friday off work and saw the doctor in Phnom Penh and had a blood test. Nothing showed up but the doctor said i probably had some infection in my balance canals which was sending my system haywire and advised i rest up. Thankfully now i am mostly back to normal : )

While in Phnom Penh i was able to stop by the Office of Antiquities to pick up our export certificates for my bitching Jayavaraman VII wooden heads. Next step, actually posting it! On that note i wanted to share my bitching 'Hanuman slaying the Crocodile" (the photo doesnt do it justice). I got it in Pursat which is famous for marblework. It weighs only 6 or 7kg so i think i will take it back on the plane but its a bit fragile so i will have to pack it well.

Anyway, so i headed up to Chom Chao (the intersection of the road to Kampong Speu and the road to Kampot to await the taxi the Phnom Penites had chartered). It got pretty dark pretty quickly and Chom Chao aint the kind of place people linger. Luckily there was a fruit seller who took pity on me and offered me a seat under his lamp and we had some small talk.

We finally arrived at the place and spent the weekend eating, reading, drinking and learning to play dominos. The highlight had to be a kayak trip a few of us made up the river. It was really beautiful to get in amongst the mangrove inlets and see lots of green. Unfortunately our 3 person canoe worked a but like a game of table tennis so we kind of zig zagged hitting the sides of the inlet, earning us the name 'Team Zig-Zag", the poor German girl at the front being the battering ram. We got a wee bit lost and followed this inlet down which got progressively smaller and smaller before we admitted defeat and turned back. After several attempts to use our Khmer skills, one family living nearby directed us the way out.

We headed out into the open river and headed for the nearest beach to have a swim. Unfortunately team zig-zag has expended all our energy when we got lost and we were all so exhausted we arrived back to the resort a good 45 minutes past everyone else (right when the wind was picking up making it even harder!). I am still sore!

Time passed all to quickly and I decided to take the bus up from Kampot, as the van the others had hired was going by a different road and it would be hard for me to connect back to Kampong Speu. Of course I had decided that the weekend had gone entirely too smoothly for me, so about half way through the bus trip I felt something very uncomfortable in my pockets and pulled out the room key to the bungalow DOLT!

Luckily there was another person there on the bus who was with our group so i organised for her to have the key and the management of the hotel said they would send their regular taxi guy to pick it up...

This week I am hoping to just do day trips in Kampong Speu to rest up a little bit but these things are bound to change very quickly!