Last weekend, on my first non-jet lagged Saturday in Cambodia, I drove with a group of coworkers down to Kep, a sea-side resort along the south coast. We stayed in lovely barebones bungalows with 80s pop-icon posters on the walls and views out over the South China Sea. Most of Saturday was spent on Rabbit Island, a former penal colony of the coast that has the only white sand beach in the area. A little sun, a little seal; pretty fabulous stuff.

We ate fresh caught crab for dinner. I struggled with that. After years in Maine, I’m a lobster expert. You know how soldiers can take apart their rifles and then put them back together while blindfolded? I can do that with a lobster (though, the parallel somewhat breaks down at the putting back together stage). Crabs—and I should have seen this coming—are a whole different animal. I was given about a pound and a half of crab, but I still went hungry after slicing up my fingers with the shell. Still, if not being able to get at crab meat is the biggest problem of the day, you’ve had a damn fine day.

We ate across from some of the fine old mansion that line the coastal boulevard. Kep was once the Kampuchean Riviera, a veritable Newport, RI without the lockjaw. The Khmer Rouge, not being party people, burned everything down. Most of the mansions are now cement shells. They remain quite beautiful in a faded-glories sort of way—the way you’d still take Elizabeth Taylor home because she used to be Elizabeth Taylor and you can always squint.

On the way back to Phnom Penh our van had to swerve around an elephant that a rice farmer was riding down the highway. I can’t say exactly why, but this excited the hell out of me. I always watched Star Wars for the creatures; seeing an elephant will never get old.