Fresh Fish…We Catch ’em You Buy ’em

Early start for me, up at 5:20am to walk about 1km along the riverside to the fishing boat dock. David and Amanda decided to stay in bed.
The fishermen sail their wooden boats in from their night at sea, up the river to unload their catch on the dock.

Once the catch was sorted on the boat it was scooped up into baskets and passed onto the dock.

The creatures that had been caught varied from crabs, prawns and squid, shells and fish including some that look like birds heads maybe gar fish…and some that were just weird looking…

Crab

Picky prawn purchasor

Squid

Shells

Fish

Bird-head fish

No idea

Under no idea

Close up of no idea

It was a bit disturbing to see the size of many of the crabs caught…they were tiny….there are no sustainable fishing practices here and there appears to be no rules regarding minimum size or even about catching and keeping females…I wonder what it will be like in 5 years…will there be any left?

Unsustainability in action

For now though, some of it is sold here but most of it is taken to the market by the fisherman’s wives. The vast majority of the fishing families are Muslim. The whole family is involved including small children….I always love to see the fashions of the muslim women…bright colours and jewellery…though I really don’t understand wearing socks or fluffy slippers in wet places…

Learning the ropes

Little hands

Fluffy Slippers

In most cases the women do the selling and buying while the men clean the boats…though there are always a few men onshore to help secure the boats and lift the heavy baskets.

All hands on 'dock'

The haggling over price and quality is really very entertaining to watch…and the stacks of money they hold out in the open for all to see makes me comfortable that these are good people who trust each other…

Correct Change

Days takings

Transportation of the fish is either in woven baskets or metal bowls…some are attached to motorbikes or bike trailers that range from the very old to the very new…

The old

The new

In addition to the fishmongers, there are a number of other people selling a variety of foods, either for immediate consumption such as the guy cooking fried noodles; the old lady cooking some type of thin rice paper then rolling it around something else that I couldn’t identify; the shy lady selling peanuts in their shells who smiled but quickly turned around when I raised the camera; the lady with a bicycle loaded up with baguettes and other yummy looking rolls that made me wish I had taken some money with me; the couple selling mangoes; or for later such as the ladies selling raw chicken which had yellow flesh like the ones we had eaten at the roadside bbq near Angkor Wat; the next lady that had raw sausages who unfortunately couldn’t tell me what they were made of and the lady with kids helping her cook something wrapped in leaves over coals which the young girl didn’t really feel like fanning…

Noodles

Wraps

Fresh baguettes

Mangoes

Really Raw

Raw enough

Sausages

Fan the flames

Looks like chocolate

I took lots and lots of photos…without a flash even though the sun was just rising as I left…so some of them are a bit blurry but hopefully they will be all I need to remember this morning in years to come!

Decorations

Ice coffee

Did someone say fishing?

By the time I returned it was time for breakfast. We decided to have an easy day today and had plans to get some photos sorted and catch up on the blog (it’s amazing how much time it takes to write this dribble…and even longer to work out which of the average 300 photos I take each day to include). Due to not checking the amount of data on the tablet before leaving home I ran out of space to upload photos from my camera a couple of days ago…so today I went to a computer store and bought a new usb flash drive so I can move some old data off (yes, I know it’s been two years since we were in Europe and I should have done that ages ago but better late than never right…)

We decided to go and sit down at the Epic Arts Cafe and use their free wifi, drink there award winning coffee and taste their famous chocolate brownies…okay, maybe not famous yet but they will be now! The cafe is staffed by Cambodians who are needing a fair go at gaining skills due to their unique abilities…upon arrival we were given a menu and order form with pictures and we wrote on how many we wanted. This helps the staff who are deaf.

Epic Arts Cafe

Amanda ordered the special drink…a Chocolate Brownie Shake and a scone. David and I both had to try the Chocolate Brownies…they were unlike any brownie I had eaten before…they were soft, gooey and very rich…very yummy!
Amanda and I also had a look at the art work located in the upstairs area. There were paintings, drawings, t-shirts, jewellery and bags. I bought a wooden bracelet and Amanda bought a satchel style bag.
It was nice to just sit and relaxed…we also saw one of the ladies that had been on our tour yesterday there too.

Relaxing

New bracelet

New Bag

After all that sitting and relaxing we thought why stop now…so we went up the street a bit to the Ecram Cinema. It offers several private cinema rooms…because they were quiet and I asked if they had a non-smoking room, we were able to use the big screen cinema which is usually the ‘public room’ with a big bed and several couches…only we had it all to ourselves…our cold drinks were delivered…the air conditioning was very comfortable and we were able to select what we wanted to watch, from over 1200 movies…we chose ‘Despicable Me 2’!

For our lazy day late lunch we walked around to the Kampot Pie and Ice Cream Palace. There was a bit of an entertaining mix up with hot dogs between our table and the next… ‘chili dog’ and ‘cheese dog’ sound very similar in English with a Cambodian accent… I had a long wait for a plate of chips and gravy, but it was worth it…and our decision to order lemon meringue pie (David); banana cream pie (me) and Banana ice cream (Amanda) was proof that our eyes were indeed bigger than our bellies…

After so much relaxing we went back to hotel to cool off (no pool so took a cold shower instead) and finish sorting out photos.

The Rusty Keyhole is a bit of a must do in Kampot so we ventured out for our final dinner and shared a huge plate of their famous for ribs. They were okay, just a little bit dry, though maybe they would have been better earlier in the night.

We met a family from Portland, Oregon who were at the table beside ours and spent the rest of the evening talking to them until the restaurant started packing up around us…America just moved up our list of places to visit!

There has been a wedding going on in the street a couple of blocks from the hotel for a few days…on our way home, the music was still blaring…hopefully they’ll pack up soon!