January 12-17
Kampot is a city on the Preaek Tuek Chhu River in southern Cambodia. It’s known for its pepper plantations and salt fields. Many buildings date from the colonial period, including the Governor’s Mansion. The house is now the Kampot Museum, which has exhibits on the city’s history. To the west, Preah Monivong Bokor National Park has a cool climate with forests, waterfalls and wildlife including gibbons and big cats.
Highlights were the fabulous riverside Nibi Spa, SUPing through mangroves with our friends at SUP Asia, eating great vegan food and playing games at Simple Things. But in general, this was the first location of our entire trip that we wished we hadn’t visited. Kampot has the most dominant ex-pat scene we experienced but it was clear foreign money is not making it into infrastructure. This was the filthiest place we visited. Getting to Kampot, 2 hours from Sihanoukville and then 3 hours to Phnom Penh both entailed driving the entire time on completely dug up roads under construction and spewing dust literally the whole way. Watching the locals impacted by this massively corrupt and dysfunctional project was heartbreaking. Luckily we had a very nice driver going to Phnom Penh who told us stories the whole way.
