Pchum Ben trip to Kep

Hiking in Kep National Park

Boat to Rabbit Island

Cambodia has several long, important holidays. The longest of those is Pchum Ben, translation "Ancestor's Day". Pchum Ben is a 15 day religious festival over which Cambodians pay their respects to their deceased relatives of several generations (up to 7 according to wikipedia). Cambodians return to their homelands to give food and monetary offerings to their ancestors and to Buddhist monks. While the holiday is 15 days long, the government traditionally gives the last three days off as a government holiday.  This year though, because the three days for Pchum Ben fell during the same week as the Commemoration Day of the King's Father (also a government holiday), the government announced about two weeks before that the entire week would be a holiday (why work just one day in a week?).

Bungalow in Kep

With all the time off, two of the other MCC Service Workers (Audrey and Vince) and I decided to get out of Phnom Penh and head over to Kep, a little town about 94 miles south-east of Phnom Penh, near the Vietnam border, on the Gulf of Thailand (which should take about three hours to get to on a bus, but because of traffic our bus took 6.5 hours.). It's a quiet little town, catering to mostly Cambodian tourists. Audrey and I shared a little wooden bungalow at the base of the mountain, facing out over the Gulf. It was so cool at night in Kep that we were perfectly content with just a fan.

My monkey friend Kiri

For all that we thought this trip was going to be quiet we had a lot of adventures! We made friends with a cow who then tried to head butt Vince, went hiking in the Kep National Park (on the aforementioned mountain), befriended a tame, orphaned monkey- who fell off my lap, scared herself, and tried to bite me for it, and then proceeded to steal and eat one of Audrey's earrings, went to a butterfly farm, explored old, decrepit buildings from Kep's hay-day in the '60's, took a boat out to Rabbit Island and hung out on the beach there, visited an organic Kampot Pepper farm, and haggled with shop keepers for crab at the Crab Market. And we ate lots, and lots of good food, including an all you can eat breakfast buffet, tacos, and fresh caught and steamed crab with black pepper sauce.

Relaxing on Rabbit Island

We returned to Phnom Penh on Wednesday, and I spent the rest to the week relaxing in city and doing very little of anything.

Cooking fresh crab at the Crab Market