the road south

we had a seriously cool road trip yesterday. it started off as being a day out at 'chisel mountain' which at first was just an hour outside the city, then it turned out to be more like 2. by the time we left and got there it was lunch time so by the time we had climbed this little hill and had our picnic it seemed a good time to head back and have a chilled out afternoon in the city. from the top of the mountain you could see for miles and miles, even though it was quite a small little bump in the terrain. you could see as far as the sea, which was a little while away. so we all decided to head off down to the beach spend the afternoon having some food then driving back in the evening. by the time we actually got there, which was a lot furthur than originally anticipated, it was getting dark. we had enough time to eat some superb seafood and then a shortn walk then the 3 hours back to the city. i tell you it was great. the town is caled kep and is a very small fishing village where they have these masive crabs and big fish of all sorts of variteies, most of which you probably wouldnt find in the tesco frozen meat section. so we had an assortmant of recently decesed fish, which was obviously great.
it was a good oppertunity to see a bit more of the country side, although it all looks mostly the same, there were a lot more rice fields down this road because the road follows the river most of the way down right near the vietnam border. kep was a khmer rouge stronghold untill 2002 so there are still alot of bullet ridden buildings, and im sure if you wondered off into the forest you might come back with only part of a leg remaining. the rice paddies are so green, so much so that it actually hurts your eyes looking at them and there are these beautiful pink flowers that blossom this time of year, although its the dry season and hasnt rained for months the river still provides enough water to farm nearby. there is a strong burning smell as the farmers burn the old crops and start to churn up the ground for next season. i like to think i would like to live out in the country in the middle of nowhere, buy some land and a little shack and take it easy for a while but the truth is you are so far away from civilisation i would begin to go insane after a while, im only just keeping my sanity here in the city. the thought of living in the outback does make me smile though. everyone is so happy and friendly.
we did get lost a few times on the way back and had to stop for gas a bunch of times as well, which was pretty funny really. a lot of people out in the city see white people very rarely, so even stopping for gas can draw a crowd.
one thing you see a lot of is these big red cool boxes on the side of the road, there are loads of little shops that all sell the same things and they all have cool boxs with drinks in them. we stopped and got some water in a little town somewhere on the road south. wteve started drinking it and then said 'someone has peed in this!' we all shouted 'ughhhhh' and then threw it out the window. that was pretty yuck. a good thing about these shops, particularly in the country, is that they sell fruit. so we cought a few dozen fresh mangoes and had some coconut juice straight out the shell, it then took me the best part of en hour to pry the shell open and scoop out all the tasty insides.
the actual beach is not really that nice, there a lot of rocks and stuff. one thing they have a lot of is crabs. we caught this big one that would have been ready for cooking in probably a few weeks, it was pretty big but not quite big enough to eat yet.
it was a good fun day out, although very long, i enjoyed it. i am completely exhausted today becaue of it and probably wont recover all week, but it was worth it.

on and on and on it goes the world it keeps on spinning.
Ben.