Kampot and Kep

Kampot

Kampot is a French Colonial town with a pleasing waterfront promenade and a lazy lifestyle filled with cafes and restaurants located in its jaded French Colonial buildings. The small town has a grid structure layout with large roundabouts. The Praek Tuek Chhu River further upstream breaks into a loop where one can take Kayaks out for a ride.

By the Riverside in Kampot

I spent a few days here and used it as a base to visit the Bokor National park and the seaside town of Kep. Some great places for local Khmer food are Lemongrass Bistro and Vanna restaurant and bar.

I noticed quite a number of muslims in Kampot. Muslims are around 1-2% of the population of Cambodia and are mainly of Cham origin.

Chams were the inhabitants of the medieval Hindu kingdom of Champa, located on the coast of central Vietnam. Many, particularly among the elite, converted to Islam as the Muslim faith spread eastward into island and peninsular South-East Asia. After the Khmer deserted Angkor, the imperial capital of Cambodia, in the fifteenth century, the Vietnamese, expanded south and gradually conquered the Champa principalities. Preferring to live among the Hinduized Buddhist Khmer rather than the Sinicized or Confucianized Vietnamese, many Cham abandoned Champa after the seventeenth century and migrated to Cambodia.

Bokor National Park

Bokor National Park is a beautiful ride up in the hills and one can feel the clouds slowly roll in as you go up. This was a place for the French to go to when the heat in the plains got oppressive. Today locals go out in hordes during holidays to breathe in the cool air. I started early and was able to beat the crowds. At the top there is an unremarkable lake and waterfall. What is noticeable however is the construction of hotels and a Casino by Chinese speculators who have taken over parts of the National Park. It cannot be good for the country and hope that better sense will prevail and a balance between nature and development will be achieved by the country and its political leaders

Kep

Kep Crab Sculpture

Kep is a sea side town and lies in all its abandoned splendour. Like a ghost town it awaits it's past patrons while local party goers hit the town over the weekends. At one time it was the playground of the rich before Pol Pot drove away all the residents and even today you can see abandoned villas and sprawling layouts snapped up by Chinese buyers and lying bare waiting for prosperity to return.

High above the salt flats, is the Wat Samathi Pagoda from where one can see miles away into the sprawling landscape and the Ocean. There was construction happening at a furious pace and I met a couple of monks who said there's going to be a meditation center where people could come for short time meditation courses.

 

Fresh Crab at Magic Carb

Above the town, the hills are part of the Kep National park and one can take a walk or ride a bicycle or Motorcycle around a concrete path built for tourists. Hopefully thanks to the park, the hills will be kept away from speculators and construction activity as has happened to many such sea side towns.

 The best place to have a magic plate of crabs cooked in Kampot green pepper with a beer on the table is the Magic Crab restaurant. It's located just beside the landing dock where the fishing trawlers come in early morning to sell baskets of blue crabs to the local vendors.