Kampot. An easy place to love.

We are in Siem Reap, far away from lush and cool Kampot, our first stop in Cambodia.

Maybe it would have been better to never have visited this magical place as I would not be missing it right now while baking in the heart of the country. In March most of Cambodia and SEA is as hot as an oven running on high. The hot here is hotter than the hottest I have ever known. My t-shirt gets wet the moment I put it on. I feel rivers of water running down my back and my face is always wet.

The heat is making me irritated. In Siem Reap we decided to splurge on an air conditioned room after suffering for three nights in Battambang in a fan room. Smart, right? But the air conditioning unit in our new room barely spat cold air. Kuba spent a lot of time trying to make it work. Me too. I pushed all the buttons many times, propped the broken fan with an eraser, even begged it to start performing. Nada.

The lady at the reception told us that the air conditioning drama is all because of the lack of steady electricity in Cambodia. “Don’t worry” She said ” At nine a lot of Cambodian people go to bed and the unit should start working”.

Yah right. After being patient for two nights we switched to another room. Problem kind of solved. Kind of, because the new air conditioning unit kind of works. End of complains.

Back to Kampot, the city in which we found a home away from home, froze on top of Bokor mountain and met the nicest of people. What was about this place that make us think and talk about daily with other traveler?

The River

It is clean, cool, magical. No trash and human made ugliness in slight, just stunning landscapes, mountains and beautiful little places to stay at that were so simple and chick at the same time it made me wanna visit them all.

Now these little bungalows are my kind of perfect crash pads.

This Green House Guest House fits the bill too. It’s main building is a traditional Khmer house from Phenom Penh that was disassembled and moved to Kampot, repainted in bright green and decorated with exotic flowers. The place come with it’s own set of super cute bamboo bungalows.

And this is the dock of the Green House. Because the place is further away from the ocean the river water in this spot is cooler.

The fisherman boats heading together towards the ocean right before sunset

Every day at the same time. A whole fleet of them!

Flying Dragon Boat tour

This tour wowed us with Kampot’s river and the beauty of the surrounding landscape. It was a great introduction to the area. The Captain of the Flying Dragon let the kids drive the big boat. Not just for 2 min. though, but for a loooooong time. He left the two of them in charge, unsupervised, Cambodian style. B&R kept throwing me glances to check if everything is under control. The freedoms kids enjoy in Asia – it still amazes me.

The Sunsets

Stunning against the backdrop of Bokor National Park.

And all the cool stuff you can do on this fabulous background.

The people

Sweet. Kind and eager to return our smiles. We didn’t get touted here, kids didn’t ask us to buy trinkets and we could interact with the locals in a very relaxed manner not possible in places with a lot of tourists. After experiencing being chased by touting throngs of locals at Angkor Wat I cherish the every day encounters we had in Kampot even more.

City streets with crumbling French Architecture

Charming, exciting, full of potential.

 The numerous NGO projects

Cambodia is a very poor country. People live in shacks, many on much less than a dollar a day. Food, clothes, shelter, safe drinking water, schooling and healthcare are not available to many. The work NGOs are doing in Kampot is truly inspiring. Some examples: educating local people how to keep their beautiful river and city free of trash, a circus training for disadvantaged children (not a joke, this project gives them skill and a possible career path), land rights awareness informing local people of their land rights, businesses employing disabled people and aiming at changing the perception of disability with society… and many more…

The shot above is from the Kampot Traditional Music School. For 20 years the school has been supporting vulnerable and disadvantaged children by improving their future prospects by training them in traditional Cambodian Arts. The school is also preserving and reviving Cambodian music traditions by passing them to the next generation.

And the river again, after sunset

Lovely, right?

Bokor Mountain National Park

This park got us confused. Driving up the road to the top of Bokor mountain made us feel as if we were not in a third world country but on the Blue Ridge Parkway in our adoptive North Carolina. This is hands down the best road we have seen in 3 months. Check it out.

But the story gets even weirder. The flora and the fauna here is more similar to the one back home (USA), than the Asian landscapes we have been traveling through. This is the Cambodian version of the Appalachian Mountains. Just add some palm trees, some exotic trees and bushes, 4 tigers, a few elephants and gibbons, giant sitting Buddha on the top of the mountain and voila – you have the last big area of remaining tropical rain forest in Cambodia. Truly beautiful and breathtaking (not sure for how long as the place got bought for 99 years by the Vietnamese to the chagrin of Cambodians we talked to about the “deal”. Plans are under way for a big development on top of the mountain. “Corrupted government”, they would say and then they would all change the subject. “It makes us sad to talk about it”. Same goes for Phu Quok, the Vietnamese island that we visited which apparently was Cambodian until recently.

What we saw at Bokor is the most amazing expanse of green jungle hills we have seen on our trip so far. The rushed photo below doesn’t do the place a justice as it was taken midway to the top and the higher elevations were covered in freezing mist so we couldn’t snap a shot. But we did hear the jungle, the calls of blue hornbills and cicadas.

On top there are ghost structures remnants from the French who were forced to abandon the place in 1940 during the first Indochina war and then for good in 1972 when the Khmer Rouge took hold of the area. A shell of the Christian church above the road beckoned us to explore. The old structure was veiled in white mist and we could hear a song coming from the building. As we got closer we could barely see the path. Eery.

The church was full of Vietnamese chanting a prayer together. The place was starting to give me the creeps…

By now I was frozen to the bone and was ready to turn the bike and go back in search of warmth. I also wanted away from the misty mountain where I couldn’t see more than 3 feet ahead. Kuba talked me into biking two more kms in the fog to the abandoned French casino, which was unfortunately cleaned out a little. I wish they kept the patina of time on this grand building. Still it was fun to run in it’s ghostly rooms in order to warm up.

 

Sadly we couldn’t glimpse the view from the top. Even the sunset was a blur.

Driving down the mountain the air got warmer, the fog gave in to sunshine, the vegetation started feeling more ‘Cambodian’ and we were soon caked in red dust.

The landscape was back to red roads, sugar palm trees and expanses of dry fields. Ah, we are back to Cambodia, I thought, and let the soft evening air embalm with its warmth.

Our time in Kampot was a happy one. This place proved to us again that the feeling of discovery can only come with the chill pace of bicycle, the freedom of the motorbike or the slowness of leisurely walks.

Four months into the trip we know what kind of places make us want to linger. Kampot is a true fit.