Laughter at La Plantation - Cambodia blog entry #8

 After the last few very heavy posts, I thought I should add some levity to your Friday. 

Our first Wednesday in Cambodia, back on September 18 (how was that over a month ago!), we hopped in a van for the ride to Kampot and Kep. I’ll share more on those two cute little towns later, but I thought I’d start off that area of the country with our tour of La Plantation Pepper Farm.  

Built by a French couple in 2013, La Plantation employs over a hundred locals year-round and an additional 150 during harvest. They provide their employees with three meals a day, medical coverage, and a pension, as well as schooling for the children of the workers. 

And a beautiful place to work.

Our guide told us lots of other details but I was zoning out by then. Pepper growth and production sounds fascinating, but it had already been a long day and I really wanted to take a nap.  

But after hearing all about the Kampot pepper, we walked to the next pepper field – black pepper, I think it was. 

You had to jump or take a long stride across a ditch to get to it so I think only four or so from our group of 16 went across. D was one of them. One of the guys on that side suddenly slipped in the mud by the plants and fell down. Most of us giggled but the woman next to me knew him. And really started to guffaw. Which of course fed my inappropriate chuckles. 

Then out of nowhere, D sneezed. Enough heads turned her way that she had to respond with “it's just the pepper”. Which just about put me - and everyone else - on the ground in peals of laughter. 

We finished the tour and headed in for the pepper tasting. D and I really weren't interested but K talked us into. Naturally, the silliness continued. At one point, D took a peppercorn she didn't want and started to throw it out the window behind her, then realized that the window wasn't open. We lost it and poor K had to walk away, shaking his head, probably thinking, crazy American WOMEN!

It felt so good to just laugh and be silly after the couple of taxing days we’d had. There would be more silliness in the coming days.