Penarth sunset

I moved house today so I am more than a little exhausted. You know what it’s like – several weeks of organising and sorting and packing, and now the unpacking and working out where to put things, except I don’t actually have any furniture yet. I’m writing this sitting on a box of books and tonight’s bed will be a mattress on the floor. Still, it will all be worth it, I think, and this view, just a 10-minute walk from my new home, will quickly become one of my favourites.

Cornwall: Life’s a beach

This was our last day in Cornwall and we had a long journey to come the following day, so we decided to take it easy and just head to the beach for a long walk. As it turned out we visited two different beaches, had a longish walk at one and a shortish meander at the other.

On the way to the first beach we passed a pub that I absolutely had to photograph. The Bucket of Blood is in the tiny village of Phillack, near the town of Hayle.

The brewery website says the pub was named ‘after an old well that was present in the grounds which offered red water tainted with tin from the local mines’, but Wikipedia has a much juicier story. It says this Grade II-listed, 18th-century building ‘is thought to be named after an incident where the landlord brought up a bucket of blood from the building's well, as a murdered smuggler had been dropped there’.

I know Wiki is often full of fabrications but I also know which story I prefer. I wonder if there’s a ghost as well.

On to the beach, and what a glorious beach it was! I’m a bit confused about its name, though. To me it looked like one long golden stretch of sand but on the Visit Cornwall website different bits have different names, starting with Upton Towns, passing through Mexico Towans and eventually becoming Gwithian Towans.

We walked, marvelled at the incredible patterns the water had created in the sand, mooched around the rocks looking at lichen and barnacles, were amazed to see a Red admiral butterfly fluttering along near the rocks (this was the 28th of December, after all), and wondered what was causing the air bubbles being released from the sand as the water ebbed and flowed. This beach is a favourite with surfers and we saw a few eyeing up the waves and getting ready to head out to try their luck. Rather them than me in mid winter, wet suit or no wet suit!

From there, we drove north along the coast and ended up in Perranporth, a nice little seaside town that was full of holidaymakers (and their dogs – so many dogs!) enjoying the sunny day. We found the local bakery and indulged in our last Cornish pasties for a while (another day, another variety, and extremely tasty, too), sitting on a bench overlooking the beach. The beady eyes of gulls and jackdaws watched our every mouthful and crumb-fall but none hassled us. Then we went for a wander down to the water’s edge, and back through the town itself.

It was just after 4pm when we decided it was time to head back to our cottage. Although there were no clouds to create a more spectacular sunset, the sky was just beginning to turn a wonderful soft pink that looked beautiful over the breaking waves. And so the sun set on my first holiday (hopefully, of many) in magical Cornwall.

Auckland: a celebration in clouds

Who doesn’t like to moan about the weather? Yet, despite my initial grumblings about arriving back in Auckland to gale-force winds and driving heavy rain, its weather is one of the things I love about this maritime city.

Yesterday's weather

Perched as it is on the narrowest isthmus of the North Island – so narrow, in fact, that you can walk the 16 kilometres from coast to coast in just a few hours – Auckland enjoys a multitudinous palette of weather. Indeed, there’s a standing joke that in Auckland you can experience all four seasons in just one day. Both a rainproof jacket and sunscreen are essential at all times of the year!

Fierce tropical storms blow down from the mighty Pacific Ocean, bringing hurricane-strength winds and torrential downpours, and ice-chilled Antarctic gales blow up from the Roaring Forties, their fury funnelling north through the always wild Tasman Strait. Yet, despite being exposed to these climate extremes, Auckland’s climate is, for the most part, mild but also, invariably, damp – humid in the summer, and with frequent rain in all seasons.

The good thing about all that rain is the clouds that carry it. The clouds that light up in magnificent shades of pink, purple, orange and red at the breaking of the day and as the sun sets. The clouds that look like enormous clumps of cotton wool and can be imagined as faces or characters or scenes. The clouds that grow dark and angry and threatening then bring us the magic of lightning. And don’t even get me started on rainbows. How impoverished our lives would be without the glory of rainbows.

To show you the infinite diversity of Auckland’s weather, I have photographed the same scene – one of the views from my inner-city apartment, looking towards the extinct volcanic cone of Mt Eden – at different times of the day and the year. Inspired by yesterday's clouds, here then is my celebration of Auckland’s weather.

Sihanoukville: sun and sand, with a touch of sleaze

Our hotel, the Golden Sand, was rather grand looking from the outside but inside was rather ordinary. The bathroom didn’t have a shower per se, but was instead a wet room – i.e. there was a shower head attached to the wall and a drain in one corner. Fine in principle, but not in practice. It simply meant the floor of the bathroom was almost constantly wet, making it difficult to put your clothes on without them also getting damp, and we got wet feet every time we needed to go in there. The breakfast buffet was excellent with a huge variety of taste temptations – full marks there! The wifi was intermittent and occasionally showed a login screen in Russian – just shows who the majority of guests were!

We were a short walk from Ochheuteal Beach which, to me, at first sight, was horrifying. Being a New Zealander, I am used to mile upon mile of sandy shore, with plenty of space between beach-goers, who carry along their own beach umbrellas and chilly bins and rugs and picnics. Not here! The beaches in Cambodia are more reminiscent of European beaches, where restaurants and bars compete for space above the high tide line and each have their own tables, chairs and deckchairs lined up in front, almost down to the water.

So, you can quite easily end up check-by-jowl with some disgustingly huge beer-bellied male, offering a meal of his German sausage to a pretty young Khmer woman waitress – yes, we did actually overhear that conversation! We also saw many an older Western male with extremely young-looking local girls –and I don’t even want to imagine what their relationship was. I was, at different times, ashamed, embarrassed and disgusted with my fellow Westerners who have brought their low morals and obscene habits to a country where extreme poverty forces some people to do things they would never otherwise dream of doing.

However, don’t let these things put you off visiting this beautiful place. Ochheuteal Beach is 5 kilometres long – I know, we walked every inch of it – so, if you just keep walking, you will reach a point where only the local people enjoy themselves frolicking in the warm waters or, even further, to where you almost feel like you have the beach to yourself. And there are several other beaches to vary your days. Serendipity is just the name for one end of Ochheuteal, and is full of restaurants and guesthouses but no golden sandy beach, so a place to eat, drink and sleep but not to swim. Outres is a mini Ochheuteal, not as long, not as crowded, but certainly just as beautiful. Independence Beach is even quieter, though one end is reserved for guests of the resort hotel built there. And Sokha Beach is the same – a blue-uniformed guard blows his whistle at those beach-goers who dare stray on to the sands reserved for those wealthy enough to stay at the Sokha Resort.

You can eat and drink well at any of the beach-side restaurants and bars for a relatively small amount of money. Happy hours that extend for several hours and offer two-for-one cocktails are the norm, so it’s no wonder drunkenness is rife! Most bartenders make a mean margarita; many, but not all, mix a spicy Bloody Mary – all for about US$2.50. A simple chicken and vegetable fried rice would cost about the same, freshly barbecued seafood or chicken perhaps US$4. There is also no shortage of women wandering the beach, with huge trays of cooked seafood or fresh fruit precariously balanced on their heads. Others carry raw food and a lit brazier at each end of a long pole, supported on their strong shoulders, and cook the food at your request.

Many other traders sell their goods along the beachfront as well: sunglass hawkers, souvenir sellers and women who will give various parts of your body a massage, provide manicures and pedicures, and even thread your legs free of any stray body hairs! After a couple of cocktails one evening, Marianne and I both enjoyed foot massages and had our toenails painted bright purple.

Last, but most certainly not least, the sunsets at these beaches are to die for! Whether by accident or design, there are usually half a dozen of the local wooden longboats moored offshore, making for striking silhouettes against the lowering sun. Combine this with a long cool cocktail enjoyed while lounging in a deck chair at the water’s edge … bliss!

Sihanoukville may have its critics, and it certainly does have an element of sleaze, but I would have no hesitation in returning to its sandy shores.

Kep: crab capital of Cambodia

The drive from Phnom Penh to Kep takes about 3 hours and was particularly pleasant in the air-conditioned comfort of a nice car, luckily with a very good driver as the roads can be hazardous. The secret to driving here appears to involve never hesitating while always keeping a keen eye on everything else on the road, including dogs and cows, people and bicycles, motorbikes and tuk tuks, cars, trucks and buses.

As with the road down from Siem Reap, the countryside outside of Phnom Penh was mostly flat but as we got closer to the coast there were hills, some quite rugged, and in Kep our hotel, the Beach House, was built on a hillside overlooking the beach and the waters of the Gulf of Thailand.

A statue of a woman looking out to see for her fisherman husband
at the end of the main beach at Kep

After dumping our bags, we headed straight across the road to the beach for a paddle as the boys had never been to the seaside before and, bearing in mind they are 17 and 24 years old, were incredibly excited – their wide white grins were a joy to see. The sea was incredibly warm, almost as hot as the humid tropical air.

Kep is particularly famous for its delicious crabs and, just as other places have huge statues of their typical food product (Ohakune has its carrot and Woombye its big pineapple), so Kep has its large statue of a crab – a male crab I am reliably told – something to do with the width of the central plate on its tummy!

Later that first afternoon we walked the 3 kilometres around the bays to the crab market. A small troop of monkeys were feeding and frolicking in the trees above one of the old abandoned houses that litter the coast around Kep. According to our guide book, Kep was founded in 1908 as a beach resort for French colonials and thrived for 60-odd years as their favourite holiday destination. But then the French abandoned their luxurious villas after independence and many still stand, empty crumbling shells of once magnificent buildings.

Both the sunset, which we enjoyed at the one of the restaurants near the crab market, and the crabs we ate later were superb, as were all the other types of fresh seafood we savoured in Kep – prawns, shrimps, fish, squid and octopus. Seafood is my absolute favourite food so I was in heaven, except for one meal. Be warned, “deep-fried prawns in powder” is actually battered deep-fried prawns, with more batter than prawn and nothing else to accompany this rather disappointing dish.

Kep is quite spread out so the following morning’s walk took us a few kilometres in the opposite direction to the market, to the pier where the boats to Rabbit Island depart. We booked for the following morning and spent the rest of the day relaxing, the boys and Marianne swimming in the sea and the hotel pool, me sitting on a chair overlooking the bay, sometimes writing, sometimes just enjoying the view. Another evening, another sunset, more beers and succulent seafood! 

We woke to the sound of rain, which became almost torrential as the morning progressed. But the locals assured us it would clear by lunch time and it did allow some time to catch up on blogs and emails and writing. We also made a new, bright green friend, which turned out to be a coconut locust that looked like a leaf – its method of protection from predators, I assume.

The locals were right about the weather, so we tuk-tukked round to catch our boat around 11am. There we encountered a problem: we had paid for a private boat so we could come and go when we pleased but our boatman tried to rip us off by bringing a parcel of locals and 2 German backpackers along for the ride. No big deal, you might think, but if you don’t stand up against scams like this, the local people will continue to try them, tourists will become disgruntled and not return. So, we argued the point and eventually negotiated a refund of $10 off our initial price of $30, which means we actually got the return trip for $5 per person, cheaper than the usual $7 or $8 per person price.

It was a slow pleasant chug out to Rabbit Island in one of the wooden longboats the locals normally use for fishing. I’m not sure why the island is so-named as there were no rabbits and it wasn't shaped like one either; there was just a line of small wooden huts roofed with palm fronds and a sprinkle of shack-type restaurants designed for those tourists seeking a desert island experience. Everything was fairly basic and the island might well resemble paradise except for all the rubbish everywhere.

The island is relatively small, just 6 kilometres around and there’s supposed to be a track circling the island. But it is very overgrown and, in places, difficult to negotiate, so we only managed to visit 3 bays before the path petered out. To continue we would have had to clamber over jagged rocks or risk severe scratching by forcing our way through the sometime spiky undergrowth so we did neither. It was still a nice walk, watching crabs scuttle along the sand, collecting shells, and paddling in the warm water. The locals who don’t earn their living catering to the tourists are fishermen and we passed a tiny village of 4 or 5 scraggy huts where the men were repairing their nets, chickens ran squawking about and shy children peeked at us through hut windows.

It was nice to see the island while it was still relatively unspoilt as I imagine a return visit in 5 years’ time might find a concrete-block resort building dominating the beach front, though I fervently hope that won’t happen.

A woman checks the crab pots

We enjoyed another magnificent sunset – I took 55 photos in just one hour! – and salivated over more delicious seafood, and that is certainly how I will remember Kep, for its fresh succulent crabs and the stunning colours of its sky as the sun went down.

Locals swim as the sun sets over Kep beach