De Rabbit Island à Kampot

That morning I lazily woke up, put my swimming suit on, groggily walked to the hutt that serves as a restaurant a few meters away, and ordered a banana shake. While the girls were preparing it I walked into the sea until the waves lapped at my natural thermometer and swam until I ran out of breath - didn't take long since I was slightly hungover.

Walking out of the sea, slurping on my shake, I fall into a hammock and go back to my book. About an hour later I am roused from George R.R. Martin's lifetime achievement by a familiar whistle.

Ben and Jen finally made it on the island!

Handshakes and hugs and laughs. Beer and swimming and more laughs. The day seemes to go by quickly. We tried to go on a trekk around the island but the trails were too shitty so after finding proper walking sticks and giving them an origin, we decided to go explore on the rocks that line the shore, the part I hadn't seen.

Little crabs scurry away as we walk by like towering clumsy pink giants. We found a nice big rock jutting out of the water and climbed it. All around it the shallow waters were teeming with life. Crabs big like a fist would swim away and hide underneath rocks. As we were hunting them actively with our sticks we chanced upon a tiny orange octopus.

We tried to corner it and let out a "WHOAAAA" when it suddenly attached itself to a rock and camouflaged her skin into the EXACT same color.

Really cool. I love octopus even more now. We played with it for about 15 minutes, until it was exhausted. Then we let it rest under a rock.

We met the night under the roof of a wall-less hutt, each on our own hammock, The Pogues playing out of my speakers. Ben had a bottle of Samsong (Thaï Rum) so we tackled that in between 75-cent beers.

A huge fly landed near us, half its body torn away, her eyes as big as the nail on a pinky. It was dazed enough for us to take super-macro pictures of it. We went to our respective beds around 1am (not the fly - it probably died).

The next day was composed of a somewhat hungover trip to Kampot, where we found a room to share in a guesthouse that greeted you with a free beer and free pétanque (oui!).

We took it easy that night, Jen went to bed early while me and Ben drank some draughts and played games on our iPods

The next morning when I woke up I didn't think that I was about to face one of the coolest days of my trip - so far. I wanted to check out the "bat-filled cave" out of town, so after our breakfast we rented some scooters and went on our merry way.

The streets of beloved Montréal have the ill reputation of being as defiled as the acne-ridden face of a pulpous teenager, but they are nothing compared to the red-sand dirt roads of rural cambodia. Driving on these proves mentally taxing as you are constantly watching for children, dogs, chicken, other vehicules, and huge holes that might - and will- cause you to crash.

We soon passed a tiny village made out of tin-roofed shacks, drove under a buddhist gate towards a pile of rocks where an 18-year old Khmer named "Say-yaaaa" offered to guide us through, and good thing we did hire him. While the cave was not that big nor clostrophobic, we had to crawl up and down cramped holes and cracks - and did see some bats.

After the cave our guide proposed that he take us to "Secret Lake", which we accepted after snapping a few pictures of his village. He offered to drive my scooter for me and I let him, and I was not disapointed. He drove through the countryside at a pace I never would have braved.

We finally get to the lake, which is a man-made reservoir that Pol Pot had ordered built in the 70s, and many cambodians died to make it happen. We chilled under yet another hammock-hutt and ate some noodles before driving further out to a pepper plantation.

Kampot pepper is renowned for its taste and is apparently very popular in french restaurants. 8-feet high brick towers are built in rows and the plant grows against it under the taxing Cambodian sky.

We soon had to go back so that our guide wouldn't be late for his evening english class. I jokingly asked if we could come with him and he was very happy to invite us, and so about 2 hours later I found myself standing in a classroom reading a notebook to a class of twenty to teach them proper pronunciation.

The teacher also asked me, Ben and Jen to go sit with groups and engage in discussions with them, but most were too shy to reply to my inquiries.

After a very fun hour of this we followed our guide back to his house where he himself thought the children of his village the alphabet, to count, and the days of the week - for free. We had previously bought pens and candy for everyone and the women of the village were very grateful.

We tolerated all we could of this ultra-cuteness and went back to Kampoy. After having eaten a traditional ramen-and-eggs meal at our guide's grandfather's restaurant we went back to our guesthoue to get proper smashed.

There we met Julien and Raphaelle, 2 people I met in Phnom Penh. Turns out they bought their own tuk-tuk! We played some pétanque and smoked some to celebrate, while drinking cheap Angkor drafts.

At around midnight Jen decided she needed some sleep, so me and Ben set out on my scooter to find some water - Ben's scooter light wasn't working. We found a bar instead, and before buying anymore beer Ben turned to me and said "I think we should go get Jen". Little did we know how that sentence was about to make this day even more memorable.

Drive back slightly affected to get Jen, the 3 of us on the same bike asian style, get to the bar and drink more, dance with a very smooth, very old and very drunk cambodian, until we decide to ditch this loud bar infested with pot-smokers.

On the careful way back we find trampolines and can't resist the temptation to give it a go. There's 4 of them, but as I'm climbing into mine I notice there's people living underneath! Possibly the owners, dozing in a hammock, sheltered by their most prize possesssions.

In a fit of adrenalyn, Jen - who'se never driven a scooterbike before - decides that it is the perfect time to give it a try since the streets are empty. With her drunken courage she mounted the metal beast, and after Ben showed her the brakes and the gas, she rode off.

A few seconds later and she was back, having driven around the block skillfully with a huge smile on her face. Her second lap would not go so well however... She took the corner too large, forgot to let go of the gas when she braked, hit the sidewalk...

We soon witnessed her do a beautiful swan dive off the motorbike, hitting her chin on the ground.

We sobered up pretty fast after this.

The rest very soon, my loyal subjects!

Chiang Mai jour je sais plus trop

Thanks to everyone for the kind words, you are the main motivation that pushes me to keep writing.

After a few party nights and technical mistakes from the Blogger app I finally have the time, and mindset to spoil you all with my brain candy. I hope.

I do not have the patience, memory nor battery power to write with as much detail as I wish but I am going to try and recap my days quickly and efficiently, like a ninja that chose the pen rather than the sword.

The 1st day my priority was to book a room because the King's birthday was going on the next day and it was going to be hell, or so I thought.

My first stop, Julie's guesthouse, was fully booked. I did not know however that their commonroom was going to be my meeting point every day, and I would soon meet very cool people there, day in and day out.

I went to the neighbors, J.J's and they had dorms for 100 bhats a night, so I booked 2 nights, ample time to let me find something else. I'm a little bit paranoïd to get stuff stolen from dorms that's why.

In their common room I try to connect to their Wi-Fi to look for something to do but it's not working. The girl next to me is on her laptop so I ask if she got it to work. She answered in the frenchiest english I have ever heard and so I switch to french.

She also booked for 2 nights in dorms but prefers rooms, so we decide to go shop for rooms together. She said I have a good vibe and trusts me enough to share a room with 2 single beds that we find at Tawan's Guest House, and reserve for 3 nights.

We then go for a walk. There seems to be a Buddhist temple every few meters. We end up walking 3 hours and visit about 15 "Wats".

I wanted to chill with the people I met on the train and taxi earlier so I went back to Julie's and there I met them all, speaking with Dominic, a guy from London, super laid back and a fellow geek. We end up having many drinks. He is confined to Julie's against his will... A spider bite has morphed his foot into this swollen mess of blue and purple, and pus comes oozing out of a hole the doctors made.

No superpowers yet.

The next days become a mash-up of visits to temples, scooter rides, and drunken wandering, toppled by new aquaintances. I learn that there is a reggae festival on the 11th so I decide to reserve until the 12th.

Notable moments:

Playing a drinking game with germans, dominic, and canadians, as Julie's common room get flooded by people: it's King's birthday and bars can't sell beer until midnight. Julie's does however still sell the beverage, and so it gets very loud very quickly.

We chase all the girls away by having debates on who is the coolest jedi, the most dangerous sith (videogames included), if we would bang a twi'lek, and doing our best immitations of TETSUOOOOO! KANEDAAAAA!

Me and Mathilde rented a scooter for 2 days, a nice little 150cc to be able to go up in the moutain that always looms west of Chiang Mai. the road up is snaking slowly and steepily, but it was very fun to drive. The first day we visited a sacred temple in the mountain, and enjoyed one of the most spectacular mountain views of my life.

We also visited a hilltribe but I felt like I was at a human zoo and wondered if they actually liked people just walking in their village and taking pictures of their kids, and left as soon as I was done playing with 3 puppies.

Going back down the mountain we spotted a sign pointing us to Chiang Mai and took it for a shortcut and were in for a surprise. The road was barely big enough for a car, and was a mess. Mud, sand, water, patches of concrete, rocks... And we figured we had an hour of sunset left.

We made it through in the end, ended up on the side of a beautiful lake with little huts built on the banks. We had a well-deserved beer and went back to Julie's for more chaos.

Ben and Jen want to go for a fruitshake now. They are pretty cool and laid back. I will finish this later.

"Not all who wander are lost"