Days 152-155 12-15.11.2015
Cambodia. Rabbit Island
Rabbit Island is just a small island of the main land from Kep. One takes a small boat and gets there in under 30 minutes. And then one is on a tropical paradise island. Palm trees. Coconut trees. Sand beaches. Bungalows. Restaurants. Hammocks. That’s it. Time is slowing down here and everything is in harmony with the sun. As soon as it gets light, people are up. And after sunset when the mosquitos reclaim the island, there is just enough time to eat dinner before the generator switches of around 22 o’clock.
For the girls it is all about playing in the water, having fun, reading, collecting shells, meeting other travelers and eating. For us adults it’s all about reading and for once doing nothing, because there is nothing to do here.
What I have noticed is that travelling as a family makes it harder to meet other travelers. For the girls it is easy to meet and talk. When we sit down for lunch or dinner, the table is pretty much full and no other person can join us. I am missing that a bit. I have realized I keep listening in other people’s conversation. I am not sure if people are reluctant to make contact, or if the fact that we have children is for some off-putting, or if we are just too old for most of them… but generally we are by ourselves. A shame. That was the beauty at our wwoofing destination. We basically didn’t see the girls all day round. They spent their time with the boys of the family and we had our time with the other adults. There are really not many families travelling. We see the odd one but one can say maybe one family every two weeks? So Helene if you read this – I wish we could have spent more time together 🙂
Yesterday we walked around the island. And we found beautiful empty sandy beaches but we also found so much rubbish. Stéphane still gets upset about it after nearly two months of travelling in this region. We had seen two groups of people walking along the main beach here and collecting rubbish in black bin bags. Good. BUT. These people should go around the island and they could spend easily weeks collecting everything from plastic bottles, life jackets… everything really. I should have taken photos not just of the beautiful nature but also of all the rubbish we saw.
And then there is something else. Lara noticed it first. After a while in the water the skin starts hurting. It’s just like little needles. We didn’t see any fishes or animals. And in all the days we have seen only three jelly fish. But the other day I also noticed this sensation and it is really the moment to leave the water. There are no red marks – nothing. But I am sure there must be something in the water.
And to our accommodation – I don’t even know what the name of the guesthouse was. They all look the same. 🙂
Day 152 – 12.12.2015 video
Day 153 – 13.12.2015 video
Day 154 – 14.12.2015 video
On the 15th December I was brushing my teeth in the morning in our “bathroom”. I might have leaned against the sink, but definitely not much. Then there was a loud noise, the sink broken on the floor and the water pipe open and all the water running out. My guarding angel must have done some push-ups because only my left big toe got hit by a piece of the sink. I did apply arnica and I do hope that apart from changing to a lovely green-violet color there won’t be much damage to it. It does hurt a bit, is swollen but I can move it. A broken toe wouldn’t be funny.
On our last day here on Rabbit Island we didn’t really do much, a bit of swimming, a bit of reading again and preparing the blog in style…
And at night when we wanted to pay for the room, the owner started suggesting strongly that we would pay for the sink. Stéphane got angry. I went over to her, talked to her and it was dealt with in an instance. That negotiation training might be paying off after all.
So tomorrow we leave this paradise to make our way to Phnom Penh. That will be our last stop before we leave Cambodia on the 23rd December direction Myanmar.