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Published: February 13th 2013
HE SAID... We left our homestay (near Sambor Prei Kuk) at 8am and embarked on our long southward journey to
Kampot. We pulled into Skuon at 9.30am for petrol and a toilet break. Skuon is jokingly termed Spiderville in Cambodia, and for good reason. The food stalls scattered around the roadside cafe were selling all manner of deep fried spiders and insects. I wasn’t overly hungry, so I opted for a Khmer iced coffee. We jumped back into our minibus and kept heading south, arriving in Phnom Penh at midday. We lunched in the food court on the top floor of Soorya Shopping Centre (the same place I’d purchased my new camera only a week before). After surveying the many food stalls selling a variety of cuisines, we decided to share fried rice with egg and sausage (served with a small bowl of delicious soup) and a banana smoothie. The food was great, but the noise of the food court was overwhelming! After a quick detour into the supermarket, we left Phnom Penh at 1.30pm and set out on the final leg of our journey to Kampot.
After what seemed an eternally long drive in the minibus, we finally arrived
in Kampot at 4pm. We checked into our hotel (Natural Bungalows) which was positioned on the bank of the Kampong Bay River. I headed straight in for a swim. I couldn’t work out if the small sandy beach on the riverbank was natural or man-made. The muddy river bottom wasn’t ideal for wading, and the river itself was murky, dirty and noisy. Yet despite this, it was a refreshing swim. After showering we headed down for cocktails and dinner in one of the hotel’s small wooden huts that jutted out into the river. It was an ideal place to sit and relax after a long bus trip. I had the Kampot pepper king prawns, while Ren opted for the fried squid with green pepper. My meal was very nice, although there seemed to be a slight overuse of Kampot pepper stems on the plate. However, Kampot is renowned for producing some of the world’s finest pepper, so I guess if you’ve got it, you flaunt it. It had been a long travel day, so we literally crashed after dinner.
We woke at 6.30am for an 8.30am start. We headed down to breakfast, which we enjoyed in the wooden hut
again. I had fruit salad and a coffee shake, while Ren had an omelette and banana shake. We jumped into our minibus at 9am and headed to one of Kampot’s salt fields. The place was desolate and resembled a network of sewerage ponds. We walked around the ponds, listened to an explanation of the salt making process, ventured inside a salt storage shed, tasted some salt and then left. I couldn’t help but notice how poorly designed this tour was. Tourism by its very nature embraces major points of interest, and I was struggling to find the point of interest here. A group of local women and children were waiting for us when we arrived, and they all seemed to leave on bikes and by foot just after we left – it was if they had been placed there strategically for our benefit. I was hoping this was just an anomaly in an otherwise fantastic tour of Cambodia so far.
We jumped back into the minibus and continued on to what we were told was a local fishing village. The minibus stopped and we piled out onto a narrow, nondescript dirt pathway beside a small creek, where long wooden
fishing boats were intermingled with small wooden huts. We wandered around for a few minutes, wondering what we were meant to be experiencing. The village was deserted. We chanced upon a woman cleaning fish, who simply ignored a question from our local guide. It became obvious that we weren’t welcome, so I was happy to leave. I began to wonder if Intrepid Travel had trained our local guide, as he seemed completely unaware of how to sustain a tourism experience... What I had hoped was just an anomaly was fast becoming a problem.
We jumped back into the minibus and headed to the Phnom Sorsia monastery. We jumped out at the car park and made our way up a steep flight of stairs to a colourful temple. After recovering our breath, we wandered around outside the temple and then clambered down a set of uneven steps into the Bat Cave, where we disturbed a group of bats huddled on the ceiling with our torches (so much so that I received an unwelcome blob on my shoulder). We left the Bat Cave and made our way back down to the car park via another steep set of stairs that passed
a stupa. The view of the Kampot countryside from the temple and surrounding stairs was impressive, and the children playing in the small school opposite the car park were entertaining. Our guide informed us that there was another cave near the temple that we hadn’t visited, so we clambered back up the steep stairway in the searing heat and ventured down into the White Elephant Cave. You needed a vivid imagination to make out the white elephant in the rock face, but you needed no imagination to enjoy the gaudy statues littered through the cave. We scrambled out, sat and enjoyed the view of the Kampot countryside and then descended the stairs to the car park. After trying to make sense of an English translation written below an original Khmer quotation on one of the monastery walls
(Meet fool ought to thoughts; Meet intelligentsia ought to heads), we jumped back into the minibus and headed to a pepper farm.
After a long and bumpy ride on a narrow dirt road, we finally arrived at a pepper farm. We ventured a short distance into the pepper plantation, listened to a hurried explanation of the pepper growing process and purchased some
red Kampot Pepper (a
protected geographical indication product) from the farm’s small shop. I began to feel sorry for the well meaning people who had planned this tour – all they needed was a basic understanding of how to manage and organise product-based tourism.
After a few photos in and around the plantation, we jumped into the minibus and headed to Kep for lunch. On the way to our seaside restaurant, the minibus stopped on the roadside to allow us a few
out-the-window photos of Kep’s Big Crab (which has Welcome to Kep written on its wooden base). I love big icons, and Kep’s Big Crab was right up there with the best of them. A short distance from the big crab was our restaurant, which sat directly on the waterfront looking out over the Gulf of Thailand. The waterfront was hardly picturesque as there was very little beach area. We lunched on a shared table of tom yum soup (which was absolutely delicious), beef stir fry, squid stir fry with Kampot pepper, steamed fish and rice. I had a mango shake while Ren opted for a pineapple juice. After lunch we ambled along Kep’s waterfront market and enjoyed
the maze of small stalls selling all manner of things (including live crabs, dried seafood, sweet ice drinks, polished sea shells and handmade jewellery). There appeared to be a significant level of affluence in this part of Cambodia, with large luxurious houses dotted along the shoreline.
As the day wore on, I began to feel Cambodia’s natural beauty was being subsumed by development and re-development. We regularly saw new concrete water mains lying broken on the roadside, with new road works underway. Infrastructure planning was either non-existent or inefficient, with every major road in the country under development or falling apart from recent poor development. Add to this the excessive litter scattered throughout cities, towns and villages (and alongside riverbanks and roadsides), and Cambodia’s natural beauty seemed to be disappearing before our eyes. It was awful to watch, especially as a tourist, because you felt so much part of the problem.
After lunch we jumped into the minibus and headed back to Kampot. We arrived at our hotel at 2pm and relaxed on the riverbank with Angkor beers and salted nuts until we were picked up at 4pm by a long narrow boat for a sunset tour on
the river. This was a perfect way to relax and unwind from our bizarre tour of Kampot. We slowly drifted up and down the Kampong Bay River, enjoying a different perspective of Kampot from the water. On the way back, Ren spotted a photo opportunity of a flock of birds flying across the face of the setting sun, so she quickly shifted to the eastern side of the boat to set up the shot. Unfortunately, there was an imbalance of people on that side of the boat, and we nearly capsized. After much screaming and laughter, we re-balanced our seating. We also moored at a tranquil spot in the river, where a few of the group slipped over the side for a swim.
We arrived back at 6pm, jumped from the boat onto our beach, freshened up and headed down for pre-dinner drinks on the riverbank in one of the wooden huts jutting into the river. We then walked a short distance to Ta Ouv Restaurant, which was built on stilts over the river. This place specialised in seafood, so I had the grilled shrimps and Ren had fried crab with pepper sauce. It was absolutely fantastic food in
a fantastic location. We decided to head back for drinks on the riverbank at our hotel, but by the time we arrived the bar was closed, so we all retreated to our rooms and crashed.
SHE SAID... Our minibus departed the homestay (near Kampong Thom) at 8am, and we began the long eight hour bus journey to
Kampot via Phnom Penh. About two hours into the journey I had to ask Thyda when the next ‘happy house’ (the polite local translation for toilet) stop was. I didn’t want to think about it too much, but it looked like I was heading into tummy bug/flu bug territory. We stopped at a petrol station soon after that, and their ‘happy house’ was a very welcome sight for me.
I started feeling pretty sick soon after that and I put myself to sleep, not waking up until the next stop which was in Skuon – a village renowned for their tarantula snacks. I had really wanted to try deep fried spiders on this trip. However, given I was already feeling quite sick, I really didn’t want to tempt fate. The spiders were about the size of my palm and
came deep-fried in oil and garlic, but none of the stalls had any that looked appetising. Andrew had his usual Khmer iced coffee, while I headed for the ‘happy house’ again.
I have no notes on the trip between Skuon and Phnom Penh as I slept solidly until Andrew woke me up at our lunch stop. We were in the thick of Phnom Penh traffic and by a strange coincidence we were back at Soorya Mall where Andrew had bought his camera on our first day in Phnom Penh. Apparently this was the first building in Cambodia to have escalators, so it was sort of a novelty destination for the locals. We headed to the top level which was the food court.
By now I was feeling like death warmed up and I had completely lost my appetite, but I knew I had to keep hydrated. Andrew bought me a banana smoothie but I could only have a few sips of it. I sat in the very loud food court while Andrew did the rounds of the stalls that had different regional food and drinks. Under other circumstances I would have really loved tasting all the different dishes,
but as it was I asked Andrew to find ‘the blandest looking fried rice dish’. The fried rice Andrew bought came with a complimentary clear soup with fresh coriander floating in it. It was just the tonic I needed, and I felt so much better after slurping that soup. We then visited the Soorya Supermarket on the ground floor to stock up on wet wipes (essential when feeling sick on a bus trip!). 😞
I fell asleep again and only woke up as we arrived at the outskirts of Kampot. My first impressions of Kampot were very different to my expectations from reading the Lonely Planet Guide. It was a dusty river town with some colonial architecture that was in much worse condition than that in Battambang or Phnom Penh. It wasn’t just the colonial architecture that looked run down, the whole town had a rather tired look about it, not helped by the funkiest smelling streets we’ve come across yet.
Kampot used to be world famous for its pepper, which had been developed into a large industry during colonial rule. I love pepper and it would easily be my all time favourite spice. If only I had
a dollar for every snotty-nosed-pepper-grinder-holding waiter who has sarcastically asked me if I wanted some meal with my pepper! Unfortunately, they seemed to have lost their ‘best pepper in the world’ standing, and the region is now more renowned for its plantations of durian (that spiky pungent fruit that I’m not very fond of). They are so proud that they even have an Aussie style Big Durian roundabout (by Aussie style I’m referring to Australia’s obsession with building ‘BIG’ statues of produce or animals we are proud of). I suppose if I was ever going to try durian, it would have to be here. I have tried to taste it many times (most recently as an ice cream in Phnom Penh), but I just cannot get past the repugnant smell. Unfortunately, it wasn’t durian season (she said unconvincingly) – oh dear, never mind. 😊
We arrived at our hotel – Natural Bungalows – at 4pm. It’s right on the Kampong Bay River and seemed to aim for a resort atmosphere. Unfortunately, the execution fell well short. Our room on the second level should have been fabulous, but it was tiny and felt more ‘theme park/kmart art deco’ than ‘relax
with views’. Kim and Lee’s room had an intriguing ‘pop art meets blinking neon’ look.
It seemed like the whole group descended en masse into the river for a swim. However, I decided to have a nap until dinner. The mattress felt so comfortable after our night before on a floor mat! We had dinner out on a deck overhanging the river and the atmosphere was lovely. Andrew and I shared dishes of prawns in green pepper sauce and squid in green pepper sauce. Although on the small side, they were both delicious. I hit the cocktail list and felt much better after my second Mai Tai. Even though the food was fabulous, we had to wait another hour or so for everyone to get their meals. This prompted us to pre-order our breakfast for the next day.
We decided to get some laundry done at the hotel, and I was surprised at how reasonably priced it was by hotel standards. As we walked to dinner that night I saw our clothes being hand washed by three women in one of the hotel’s side buildings. Even though I had a feeling our clothes were being hand washed, it
was still a little hard to see such manually intense labour for so little payment.
It was telling that none of the group felt like exploring the town after driving through it that afternoon, and no one set foot outside the hotel’s grounds that night.
After a good night’s sleep I felt much better, but I wasn’t 100% yet. We had breakfast at 7am on the river, and the river looked much more inviting and lovely in the peacefulness of the morning before the river traffic started. My baguette and omelette were very tasty, and Andrew loved his rather large tropical fruit salad. Andrew has embraced tropical fruit, except for his nemesis papaya (because it tastes like vomit apparently), and the too sweet rambutan and lychee. I love all those fruits so I scored well. The banana shake and coffee shake were also lovely.
At 8:30am we started our included countryside tour. Driving through Kampot reinforced the opinion I had formed the day before. I saw nothing that I wanted to explore further, apart from the central market. It isn’t very often that I can’t connect with a town on some level, and at first I thought
it was because I was feeling ill, but it seemed most of our group was of the same opinion.
This part of Cambodia has a large proportion of the 4% Muslims in the country. There were mosques every few kilometres (as opposed to temples). I noticed an interesting point that the Muslim homes here have shrines for ancestor and spirit worship, which I’m fairly sure isn’t a standard part of Islamic practice. It brought home to me something that Thyda had said when we were at the Hindu temples in Angkor. She explained that Buddhism in Cambodia had many Hindu and Animism elements interwoven into it, a legacy from the two former religions of the country. I think this further illustrates the openness of the Cambodian spirit in comparison to other religious countries.
The country around Kampot was greener than that we’d seen in Cambodia so far. The rainfall is obviously different in the south, as some rice fields were already planted. Our views were full of very neat vegetable farms, large mango and durian plantations, lime green seedlings in rice fields, tiny villages filled with friendly smiling people, lazy dogs, skinny cows, enormous pigs, hairy water buffalo,
scrawny chickens, plump ducks and hostile geese. The bumpy dirt roads didn’t do much for our bottoms, but it was nice to be off the main highways and away from the suicidal truck drivers. There were lots of bicycles, motorbikes and bullock carts, but very few cars.
We started the tour with a visit to the local salt fields. I really wasn’t sure what to expect because I had always thought salt was mined. On this farm, sea water is pumped 4km inland into massive fields that are set up like rice fields. They are left to evaporate for a few days, and then the water is churned with a wooden implement that looks like a giant squeegee. The salt crystals are then harvested and rice husking baskets are used to separate the grit from the salt. However, by this point I was a bit distracted and missed any comments about further cleaning or refining (it still looked pretty gritty and muddy to me).
The next stop was a small Muslim fishing village set on a mangroved inlet. The fishing boats come back in at dawn, and then the fish are taken to the market to be sold.
We walked around a deserted village for about five minutes, wondering what exactly we were meant to be looking at. This stop was pretty pointless, as the fishermen were asleep and their families were at the market. You know it’s a boring stop when the most memorable part of the visit was when we spotted a crab on the ground and were talking about it; at which point Ella asked where it was, and simultaneously accidently stepped right on top of it.
Then we were on our way to explore caves in one of the many limestone outcrops. Getting to the caves took us through fields that used to be filled with landmines. Thankfully, the landmines have finally been cleared and replaced with vegetable gardens. The Phnom Sorsia Caves were near a Buddhist monastery, and the toilet at the monastery was a welcome sight. It turned out that I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t feeling 100% and there was quite a queue to use the ‘happy house’.
The stone staircase to the caves and the temple weren’t too hard, but the hundred or so steps had been cut for short Asian legs. This suited me fine, but
was less comfortable for Andrew and the other taller group members. The quiet little temple at the top of the first set of steps sat amongst gorgeous old trees, however we knew we were templed-out as none of us even attempted to see the inside of the temple. We merely said it looked lovely and kept walking to the caves.
Over the centuries stalactites and stalagmites have grown into the temple, and apparently one of the stalagmite formations at the entrance to the main chamber of the cave was in the shape of an elephant’s head, so it was thus called the White Elephant Cave. But no matter how I squinted my eyes, I just couldn’t see it. The cave also housed two very odd looking Buddha statues marking a holy site within the cave. We scrambled down steep and roughly cut stone steps by torchlight, and the depths of the cave were soothingly cool and dead silent. I can very easily see how this cave was chosen to house a temple.
There was a second cave further up from the main chamber in the same limestone rock, and they called this the Bat Cave for obvious reasons.
Andrew got more acquainted with the bats than he would have liked, with a wet ‘good luck’ blessing splashing on his shoulder from where the hundreds of bats were trying to sleep (despite our torches shinning rudely in their faces). There was a circular route that brought us down from the cave to the monastery via a stupa that had incredible views of the surrounding rice fields.
We made our way to the pepper plantations next. I was very excited about this visit, but was disappointed that all it consisted of was a ‘here is the pepper plant’, followed by ‘here is the shop to buy your pepper’. On further questioning, I gathered some much sought after information on pepper – green pepper turns to red pepper on maturation; sundried green pepper becomes black pepper; sundried red pepper is sold as red pepper; dried red pepper is soaked in water until the skin rubs off, and further sundried to become white pepper. Green pepper is the mildest, followed by black pepper. Red pepper is stronger with a sweet quality, and white pepper has the strongest flavour. We bought a packet of red pepper, with our fingers crossed that Australian
Customs wouldn’t be offended by it.
We then continued our drive through the country to the town of Kep on the coast. We saw so many war scarred old French mansions being demolished and the land being put up for sale to foreign investors. In ten or so years I wouldn’t be surprised if this beautiful coastline is full of resorts similar to Southern Thailand. We drove along a gorgeous winding promenade lined with stone walls and beautiful old trees. It reminded me of Southern Italian coastlines, with the addition of Asian wooden fishing boasts bobbing in the water. There is also the Big Crab statue which ensures you know you are still in Asia.
We stopped at a row of restaurants overhanging the Kep beach for lunch. It was a set menu and we started with a very very delicious shrimp tom yum soup. The Cambodian tom yum soup is similar to the Thai version, but it’s fresher and isn’t as spicy. Then came a sweet and sour whole grilled fish which should have been great, but the fish was bland and the sauce was too sweet. The beef curry was not at all appealing, but the
last dish of peppered squid was delicious. I’m going to try and recreate the delicious pepper sauce when we get home. We finished with a platter of tropical fruit that included mangosteens and rambutans, so I was quite happy.
After lunch, Andrew and I wandered over to the local fish market on the other side of the restaurants. It was full of fresh crabs being sold directly out of just-drawn-in crab pots, fresh fish in tubs, and piles of dried fish, fresh fruit and vegetables. The stand that caught my eye was a Cambodian version of a shaved ice dessert with toppings of sweet beans, tapioca pearls and coconut jelly. All topped with the hottest-of-hot pink syrups. I was tempted to try it, but I was already very full from our lunch.
We returned to the hotel and had an afternoon break before regrouping for a sunset boat cruise on Kampong Bay River. Two more members of our group were feeling ill and had decided not to do the boat trip. The boat was very tiny, but the bigger issue was that it was very weight sensitive and listed heavily when we weren’t evenly distributed along its sides.
The 90 minute boat ride was cooling and picturesque, but the stop for swimming wasn’t taken up with much enthusiasm. The sunset was simple and pretty against the Bokor Hill Station, which used to be a French summer retreat in colonial times. The highlight of the trip (for me anyway) was when Andrew pointed out a flock of birds about to fly picturesquely across the sunset. Without thinking I jumped across to the opposite side of the boat – where Alex was sitting – to get a better shot. Suddenly the boat was filled with Alex’s screams as she flew past me in the other direction! I had tipped the boat with my hasty movement and I had given Alex a big fright. I apologised...when we finally stopped howling with laughter. And after all that I didn’t even get the shot. 😊
Kim, Lee, Andrew and I had sneaky cocktails and beers on the deck before getting ready for dinner. That night we left the confines of our hotel and wandered up the road to a riverside restaurant called Ta Ouv Restaurant. The service was super quick (in stark contrast to the night before at the hotel) and the
food was perfectly cooked. I ordered the crab in pepper sauce and Andrew ordered the grilled prawns – both utterly delicious. We shared those dishes as well as ginger fish and grilled crab dishes with Kim and Lee. Lee hadn’t expected to see a whole crab on the plate. Even though it was a delicious crab, the effort it took to de-shell it wasn’t worth it. The food at the restaurant was superb. However, the surrounding water had a certain aroma about it that nearly put us off our dinner. My tip is to sit away from the water.
We walked back to our hotel down a dark and dingy street with a few rats for company. Our hotel was starting to feel like a colourful and clean little oasis in this town. We had planned on settling in for some cocktails, but our hotel’s bar had closed, so we were forced to have an early night (which in hindsight was a good thing). As we were retreating to our room, a large rat ran across our path. I may or may not have emitted a soft screech of panic.
During my travel research, I had fallen in
love with the image of Kampot I had gained from my reading. I was really quite disappointed with the reality. This wasn’t helped by the fact that most of our countryside tour had bordered on being boring; as did our ‘sunset’ tour. Kampot was gritty (not in a good way) and lacked spark or charm, but its saving grace (and it’s a rather large saving grace) was that the food was superb. Seafood and pepper go perfectly together, and not only do they have both in abundance here, but they are both of a very high quality. Even though there didn’t seem to be that much to do in Kampot, between eating pepper crab and pepper shrimp and pepper squid dishes, and sitting on the riverbank with cocktails – the two days went quickly. It was a nice change of pace from the hectic schedule we had been keeping so far.
We are off to Sihanoukville next. See you there people!
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Louise W
non-member comment
on being underwhelmed...
I reckon this is a admirable attempt to keep a 'glass half-full' perspective when you were clearly feeling pretty 'about to be empty'! Had a day or two in Vietnam when the smell of seafood and movement of boats was all a bit too much! And I can totally relate to reading up about a place beforehand and barely 'recognising' the place (you have in your head) when you see it in real life! That happened in Spain a couple of times. Ahhh...what it tis to travel eh? Full of wonder and amazement and disappointment and tests of patience in rotating measure - yet addictive all the same! Thanks for the blog - proving a great antidote to the return to work blues. xx