This morning, or rather early afternoon, we rented a car to take us to a pepper farm. In the morning I woke up early as usual, bought some rice and assorted meats from the breakfast woman along with a steamed dumping containing coconut. and then read for a couple of hours. At some point the GF woke up and came and chatted for a bit, in a very good mood indeed now that his mother has arrived hale and in good spirits. Eventually she woke up, though quite late and had a bit of fruit, then off we went.
We decided not to go to the main pepper farm but a smaller one, at the end of a very bumpy track between mango farms, with a stream to ford at one point. I wonder how hard it is to traverse during the rainy season. The pepper farm had a few more visitors than ideal (maybe six people?), and the staff were clearly run off their feet and out of everything, but we got a nice table separated from the main bit and at the side of a reservoir. We went through the motions of the pepper tasting and the visit to the plantation itself, where I was able to taste some long pepper – something I’d often wondered about, as the presumed predecessor to chillies. Funny to have all these different forms of heat, distinct and hard to describe.
Lunch was mediocre, worsened by the limitations on meat (most of what was available was meat). Coffee was surprisingly good, though, and the place was a very nice, quiet spot. Afterwards we bought some extremely expensive but good quality pepper for gifts, and then drove on to a nearby lake.
This is a very beautiful little like, clear under the blue sky, set amidst greenery and fringed by hills including a small but distinctively Fuji-esque one. It’s also a site of horror, as it is a manmade lake, dug out by hand by the slave labour used by the Khmer Rouge, with countless dead under its surface.
We went for a walk around it, over the dam built to keep it in, with water to the right and to the left an idyllic landscape of green grasses and bushes, stands of trees and glittering ponds. There is something primaeval about that sort of landscape, the edenic world of the Rift Valley that we must have evolved in.
On the other side of the dam the path continued along a mostly empty dirt road though at the end of the lake we could see trucks full of gravel passing up and down, so I support the edenic feel will not last for long. At the very corner, though, was a staircase going up, with naga balustrades looking quite new, and flanked by a pair of slender concrete elephants.
We climbed up the stairs, passing small shelters with Buddhist frescoes, clearly meant as stopping points, for rest or prayer, similar to the Stations of the Cross. At the top, there was a heavily overgrown hilltop which appeared to have been levelled some time in the past, but no longer frequented. To the left of the stairs was a tumbled down two-story shelter, or maybe a place for a pulley system (there was some old machinery around it) and a little further along, on the right, was another place, what looked like a shed, except there was a gilded Buddha in the dark porch, with a door saying ‘happyn ewyear’ and within, more gilded statues. It was all covered in grime and full of neglect, but there was some incense there, probably from the past week or so, and some offerings.
Out on the plateau, we saw a path through the trees and followed it to find a circular concrete foundation, clearly there for a while and perhaps intended for a stupa, a spirit house made of straw, and a lifesized painted statue of a standing sage, again with old offerings before his feet.
There was something very unsettling about this place at the top of a hill by that lake full of death. Maybe it had been a temple destroyed by the Khmer Rouge but with desultory efforts to bring it back to life? The stairs looked very new, and one of the frescoes had been recently painted or repainted, but everything else looked worn and abandoned. We returned, careful not to leave the path as it felt like a place where one might step on something one did not want to step on.
Back at the lake we found a small stall for coconut water, though mine had fermented into toddy. Then we returned a different way, and passed another strange spot, a hill or rocky outcrop rearing up by itself, the cave-filled rocks covered in jungle, and at its foot the statue of a prince off to seize a fair maiden, built by the government (said our driver) a decade or two ago, and clearly meant to be a little scenic stop by small rubbish-filled brook and with a picnic pavilion next to it.
We got dropped off at the Kaep beach and the GF and his mother went for a swim while I guarded our belongings and watched the sun go down over the water. Kaep’s beach is new and is a city beach, lined with small stalls and shelters with picnic tables and hammocks, but it was still pretty and very clean. It faced the sun setting over a Vietnamese island with a few slim fishing boats gliding across its still surface, and though it was a Saturday early evening, there were only about a dozen people in the water. So very peaceful and beautiful.