For breakfast, we went out to the Epic Arts cafe. This cafe is staffed by disabled people, mainly deafmutes, and is collecting money so that disable artists can teach art. Apart from this, it is just an awesome place where “every person counts”. Full of hippies, tourists (it is in the Lonely Planet after all) and stuff that you can buy to support the cause.

To order our breakfast, we got a form with pictures and descriptions of the dish. As always, I went for the continental option while Flo picked the granola-yogurt-fruit option. Also as always, we ended up sharing. My tea came in a pot this time and I’ve had about four cups before we started our tiny sight-seeing tour.

We had seen the durian roundabout yesterday afternoon but we wanted yo take a picture of it so we walked there. Another alley brought us to the Old French bridge which has been repaired in a mix of styles. Walking back to our hostel along the riverfront and through the small alleys, we decided to have a bit of a rest day and relax in our cool (temperature-wise) room over noon.

A short hop out of it at 1pm for lunch told us how right we had been as it was really quite hot. So we waited until about 4pm before taking the bike to FarmLink, a pepper plantation. Kampot pepper is special in its taste. In 2010, it received a “geographical indication” which is something you might be familiar with for French cheeses. It’s only the real thing if it is from the right region.

Growing and especially sorting pepper is s.o. m.u.c.h. work and it is done by hand here. All three sorts of pepper (black, red and white) come from the same plant. It depends on the time of harvest and the further processing involved. So we tasted our way through the peppers which was amazing but also kind of weird. Definitely a first for me.

80% of FarmLink’s pepper is exported to Europe, especially to France. However, the finer local restaurants are using it, too. I like it if a local product also gets some local use, like Flores coffee for example.

Afterwards, we sat at the riverfront again, watching yet another sun go down before trying a “Jamacain 10-speed” in Rikitikitavi.