I'm still here, folks, trying to accomplish many things despite the scorching weather.

Yesterday was the hottest. According to my landlady, the temperature inside her house reached 40C; outside, higher. Can you imagine? Hothothot. Adding insult to injury is the annoying brownouts at any time of the day and night, for several days now.

This morning, I made a bad decision of making a quick trip to the market for some supplies. It was around 11am, and the midday sun is hovering above my head. Even if the market is a mere less than a mile walk from the house, I took a motodup to avoid getting baked in the sun. My head felt like a radiator while I was outdoors and now I'm having a bad, bad headache. This year's summer heat is a lot different than last year's. It's the kind of heat that penetrates and stays in your body (and head) all day long that all you want to do is submerge in a swimming pool. 

Good idea! A pool like this one:

Tempting, isn't it? This is actually in Kep Malibu Estates where we stayed the last time we were in Kep. It is one of the recent additions to the growing hotels/guest-houses/restaurants/pubs in town owned by barangs (expats). It is set off a dirt path from the main road and nestled at the foot of Kep National Park, and about a mile to Psah Khdam (crab market).

It was our first time to stay there, in the Daling (sic) room  and I'm not saying we were disappointed. Kep Malibu Estates is a lovely French owned/managed property in compound with a big swimming pool, restaurant/bar and a lush garden. I instantly liked the bungalow assigned to us - it was spacious with a stylish Khmer interior - and it comes with a mini-bar, hot water and television set. The bungalow was just a few steps to the swimming pool and there is a small but screened patio where you can sit and watch the swimmers. The catch was that the air con machine was noisy during our stay there - the machine gives a loud whirring noise and automatically turned itself off and on again, you get the picture. In addition, it wasn't working well at all. The room was still hot - here's how the bed looked like (left) after my husband got up from bed after 30mins or so of watching the telly. 

There was not much to expect from the free breakfast (well, what can we expect for free anyway?) so if you are a big brekkie person this is not for you. My husband and I stayed in other ex-pat owned guest-houses in our previous Kep holidays and the breakfasts were far better than what we had in Malibu.

The Khmer staff were approachable and quite nice actually but when it comes to the managers/owners, it was a different story, enough to make me say I won't be getting a room there the next time we have a holiday in Kep.