I've spent the last three nights in Kampot, a river town near to the Vietnam border.
Upon arriving I managed to find one of the girls I met in Battambang a couple weeks earlier, Avital. She had been in Kampot for a few days already but was happy to show me around the town a little. It's nice to see a familiar face every now and then!
I went out to dinner with some of the friends she had made at the hostel. Kampot definitely has that backpacker feel I was looking for. There was a large group at dinner and each and every one was traveling solo - there were French, German, Israeli, Aussie, Spanish, Portugese and Holland making up the crew.
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The next day I was feeling active and decided to hire a bicycle and ride out to a couple of the hostels situated on the river further away - Arcadia and Green House.
After the ~9km ride in the blazing heat it was great to take a quick dip in the river to cool off!
From here we hired a kayak and paddled from the Green House to Arcadia and I made use of their river toys - a floating deck with a 5m high launching pad off a ladder and a big air bag!
That night Avital and I met up with David, the French guy that runs Climbodia - the first and only rock climbing establishment in Cambodia, to lock in the next day's activity!
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We returned the bikes and picked up a scooter to make it across town to Climbodia for our early day of climbing.
The USD$35 day consisted of an easy climb up a sloped rockface, via ferrata (following a steel cable across the rock face), abseiling 30m down through the cave, cave exploration and as many climbs as we could muster at the end!
The initial climb was very easy, racing up with no dramas.
Traversing the rock face was easy. As you move along you unclip and reclip the two carabiners upon reaching a loop in the rock.
The abseil through the cave was awesome. I opted for the route with no walls so you simply hang by the harness and rope and descend.
The cave trek was similarly fun. Moving through with often only the light from your headlamp and a few tiny crawlspaces where you had to get down on all fours to get through - not easy when you're 6ft4! Lucky for the helmet or I would have smacked my head more than usual in asia - which is a lot!
From here we had the proper climbs. The first climb consisted of a somewhat challenging for a beginner rock face which was said to be easier at the start and more difficult toward the top - myself and Timothy, the American guy traveling with his wife, made it to the very top, while the two girls made it closer to the harder bit and succumbed.
The second climb was much harder. Timothy, who had some experience in climbing, managed to scale it to the lofty heights of the top, but despite my determination I could not manage it.
The second climb started off more difficult but once reaching a certain point became easier - I just couldn't get up there despite quite a few tries - and falls!
After retiring for the afternoon we organised to meet for dinner with the American couple at the Rusty Keyhole - the go-to restaurant in Kampot for their famous pork ribs.
After getting some more use out of the scooter and cruising around we headed back to the hostel to snap a photo of the sunset from the Mad Monkey's rooftop bar before meeting up for the fantastic 1kg rack of rib dinner which I absolutely demolished!
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