Strolling Kampot.

Kampot is the capital of the-surprise,surprise-Kampot province. It is a laid back town, and one of the prettier that i have seen in Cambodia so far. In the center there are several streets lined with old Chinese style shop houses and french buildings. Sort of a trademark is the roundabouts with monuments standing in the middle. Great for road descriptions. Getting to my dormitory at the Blissfull guesthouse was simple-waling from the Durian to the salt monument and then breaking left, or from the millennium monument up to the salt monument, crossing into my street.

My last sight of the Cambodian capital. A wet one!

I came to town in the afternoon. Getting out of Phnom Penh took its time-in the morning there had been a tremendous rainfall, and many of the streets normally used by buses were more or less impassable for them. Lot of detours was the obvious consequence. That leg of the journey was sort of a nautical experience-the bus making a bow wave which flushed dirty water and trash up to-and even into-street side shops. Not very popular. There were even children swimming in one of the streets. Not to be recommended. It is not at all clean.

The saltmakingmonument in Kampot. In the dry season, saltmaking is important in the area surrounding Kampot.

The millennium memory. 

The big durian. Kampot province is famed for their extra delicious durians.

Psar Samaki, the big market, is worth a stroll. Good for people watching and good for simple, cheap but good food-street type. It is laid out as a grid of narrow passageways and is a pressurized boiler of human activity. And smells. Dried fish and squid and shrimp paste are particularly generous odour contributors. Hidden between fruit mounds, shrimps and clothing is even a jewelelrysection where the jewellery makers hammer tapping stands in great contrast to the food vendors shouting and screaming meters away.

Fried bananas at the market.

A sweet stall. Beans, riceflour and coconutmilk are base ingredients.

Local transport.

A good place for noodlesoup or ricesoup. The coocking is made on a stove made of an empty oilbarrel, and fuelled with wood.

Small sharks destined for the dinnertable.

Like in Norway, there are shops specializing in building materials. Only that the products on offer are different ones. Here you find palmleaf panels, stilts ans bamboo poles.

The old bridge across the river. Smashed during the war, and restored in a variety of styles.

Cosy streets. The french left an attractive mark on the town.

Another french era gem. Now turned into the local-overpopulated prison. I took this shot while sitting eating in a sidewalk shop at the corner. The guards suddenly all left the towers, so i took the opportunity to snap.

The pretty lotus pond.

Time for a sunset cruise. Here is the venue-complete with bar&ice cooled beer plus a toilet to get rid of that  of that beer.

The youngest bartender around. A big time charmer.

Greetings from the bridge. Local Muslim girls.

The 5 O'clock race-fishing vessels hurrying downstream towards the sea.

Along the river. It was a nice trip upstream, but the sunset was hidden behind the mountains. It was the wrong direction. Still it is worth the trip-it is a pretty stretch of river.

Heartcrusher at the evening tivoli near the durianmonument.

Taxi hate. A travellers way of paying back seriously.

Don't you love them. The tuktuk/taxi/moto drivers all over the world whose sole reason for existing is to make things miserable for travellers. Those who do their best to cheat on the price, to take you not to where you want to go-but to where they get a commission. Those who tell the hotel you phoned the same morning has been closed for over a year. Those who take you to a friends shop when you clearly stated you were heading for a restaurant. Every traveler has experienced this. Many times. And while there exist good guys even in that trade-they can sometimes be as difficult to find as the Yeti himself. Some countries being far worse than others.

In Syria a decade ago, I developed a working method to track down the few good guys around. Those can be good to have when you plan an excursion the following day. Syria is one of the countries when the honoured members of the Transport Clique are at their worst-so there it is a to be or not to be. For this method to work smoothly, a map is needed. Also you need the nearest taxis to be close to your place. The closer the better. Around the corner being perfect. Armed with that map in your hand, go to that close by taxistand. Look a bit lost and ask to be taken to your place. If the driver point you in the right direction, telling you it is only a  short walk with no need for a ride-you know you have found one of the better. If the driver tells you: ohhh, My Friend-a loooong way to go-its going to cost you your life savings-plus some extra. Then you should hear some alarm bells ringing loudly. Now you have several choices. You can choose  the fast and easy option of just leaving. Preferably after having told the gangster a thing or two. Or you can do as i did on a couple of occasions when I had time and was ridden by my inside devil. I let him take me on his ride. Sometimes literally around town. Two things are important-pretend to be totally ignorant-and follow the trip on your map. And when he finally finish his vile sightseeing trip outside your place, show him the map. Tell him to hell-with no money pocketed from you. And when he start to make noise-he will-suggest taking a trip to the nearest police to discuss the issue further there. He then-with murder in his eyes-will back off. And you can go celebrate with a beer, having beaten them in their own game.

Show me one long term traveller with not a single hilarious encounter with this tribe. Either he suffers severely from bad memory, he has pushed the experiences out of his mind. Or he is not a long term traveller at all.

In India i had the fortune of falling prey to one who pulled the "far away" card out of his sleeve. I was going to the Jewish part of Kochi, a city in Kerala. It was only that it wasn't that far....my lonely planet had my current location and my destination on it-and even if he had to double the distance because of one way lanes, blocked roads or other obstacles;the total trip could not be more than 2 kilometers. OK-I decided to let him go for it. Having my map-and my GPS at hand. But i didn't need any of those to register the sun shifted from left to behind, to right to front-and then over again. My GPS told me the same story-driving in circles. And driving back and forth on parallel streets-making sure not to drive twice in the same place. I wondered how far he was going to go before he called it a day. I never got an answer to that....because....he ran out off fuel. It felt like a Divine action. Frantically he tried to restart his vehicle, but-nope. The engine was not prepared to do any more before being fed. Seeing on my navigationset i was a lot closer to my destination, a short walking distance, i found the time had come for the tear filled goodbye with my driver. Showing him on the map and on the screen that i clearly knew what he was up to...i refused paying a single rupee. He was not happy-but he also was half a meter shorter than he had been when the trip started. His last try was to ask for a donation towards a bottle of petrol....i was his first customer of the day, he explained. No-i am not your customer at all-my friend. Have a nice day! Was my reply-and closing of the case.

In India-in a town whose name is forgotten, I was approached by a driver offering his services. I was going from the trainstation to a hotel quite a bit away. What price concerns he first tried the old "up to you" trick. Either hoping for a tourist with no idea about local prices. Or ready for a fight if that tourist actually only was going to pay a normal rate at the end of the trip. I didn't swallow that. I wanted a price. Now he wanted 30 rupees-less than half a dollar for the job. Hmmm, i thought. Normally he wouldn't even start the vehicle for that sum. Obviously a commission ghost. I accepted the price-telling EXACTLY where i wanted to go-and i only pay if you go there DIRECTLY. He willingly agreed, only to stop at a totally different place ten minutes later. Stating my place had burned down. To my question about why he didn't tell that before-he had no answer. DRIVE ME TO MY PLACE-NOWWW!!! I almost yelled. He refused, stating this place was better for me. My place was full of rats, and bugs and-dishonest people (!).The latter being rather hillarious, coming from that mouth. "But i thought you said the place was burned down??" New silence. Knowing I was only a few hundred meters from my destination i picked my luggage and started bailing out. "Nononono-wait" the now distressed driver almost shouted. And drove me to my place. His price at arrival increased tenfold. New payback time. I reminded him about the price we settled on-suggested by him, not me. Also that this place was the agreed on destination. I paid him exactly the original price-and tried to leave. The driver now physically tried to drag me into the hotel, in a last desperate effort to extract a commission from the hotel-which would translate into a higher room price for me. I brushed him away, stating "I said I wanted to go here. Whether or not i want to stay here is my business, not yours!" Then walked off down the street. Seeing he followed me in his tuktuk. For a while we played cat and mouse. Me going up a street, changing street. Going in and out of shops. My faithfull driver always there. Before he finally left. Then I returned to the hotel, checking in. Later in the evening i met the driver again. He was drinking tea. Hello my FRIEND-I cheerfully greeted from a distance. If eye glimpses could kill, I would have died there and then.

So was I nasty towards these drivers. In a way-yes. But not really. All I actually did was keeping them to their own deals-and playing their own game. This is a kind of people which worldwide are vultures to the extreme towards travellers. My experience is that the worst people in all countries are taxi tribe members. Being kind and giving second chances in situations like these only results in giving their way of cheating and lying more momentum. If they learned that behaviour often will smack them in their face, they would rethink. So taxidrivers of all kinds out there-treat me good and you will get your deserved pay. Treat me the way the mentioned drivers did-and you will suffer! After years of travel with almost daily fights with this occupation my level of bulshittolerance is zero. Amen

The tribal roundtrip. Day 3

Day 3. And I am getting dusty to the core of my soul. There has been no shower around. But there is only one more night to go. Tomorrow evening will see me getting soaked.

Flower beauty. In between all the khaki, there are some of these jewels.

The child of a blacksmith. A cowbell.

On my way to the Great Rann of Kutch. It is a huge expanse of salt. Shining white with no features or contrasts. Here we are on the road out to a tourist parking in the middle of nowhere. Some human installations are still visible trough the mirages. I felt thirsty only by watching it!

Out hiking. There is a weird beauty to it. But you feel so small and vulnerable. This place is lethal. I walked almost an hour away from the parking ground. leaving behind me the garbage Indians are unable to let be throwing everywhere, and  all other people. It was a walking on the moon experience. Total silence. Only the crunching sounds of salt being crushed under my sandals. It felt like i was the only living thing on a strange planet.

Gathering firewood

Close up of a piece of Kutchi furniture.

And a look at the whole piece. 

Teabreak.

Muslim village girls.

We stopped in a small, far away, market village.

His way of posing.

A motorcycle truck in a local market.

A camel with tattooed face awaits a burden.

An elderly rabari woman. Note her tattoos and her elongated earlobes.

Different woman-same type of tattoos.

A camelian roadblock.

The abbot of Than monastery, 60 kilometers from Bhuj. It is a temple complex where only some of the buildings are in use. Others are more or less ancient, 500 year old ruins. It is set at the foot of the Dinodar hill-an extinct volcano. The temple belongs to the Kanfata sect.

The day is nearing it's end. The sleeping place is in sight-at the temple on top of the mountain. And it is walking up to it. Like the monastery, this is a Kanfata site. The temple is dedicated to Dharmanath. He was a Tirthankara-one who have conquered Samsara-the cycle of birth and death. Legend tells he stood on his head for 12 years at the top of this mountain as penance for a course he had made. The gods begged him to stop. He set the condition that the first thing he looked at, became barren. And the first thing he looked at was what became The Rann of Kutch. So it worked.

The temple on the top. Small and attractive with a superb view over the plains below. There is a caretaker which live up there most of the time. In addition to take care of the temple and performing the evening ritual-often in solitary with recorded music thundering down to the nearest settlements-he also works down in the village. Trekking up and down most days.When we arrived, we were served tea. Later it was rice and some curry before bedtime-a mattress in a big and now empty dormitory room.