Kampot, Cambodia — The Country’s Most Liveable Town

Kampot is the exception to my Cambodia ambivalence: a slow river town with French colonial architecture, world-class pepper farms, and an atmosphere that makes people stay longer than they planned.

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Kampot is a small town in southern Cambodia, on the Prek Kampong Bay River about thirty kilometres from the sea. It is known for pepper — Kampot pepper is one of the most respected in the world, suppressed during the Khmer Rouge years and slowly revived since the 1990s — and for being the kind of place that travellers discover and then do not want to leave.

Kampot riverfront at night with the neon-lit bridge reflecting in the Prek Kampong Bay River
The Prek Kampong Bay river at night — the bridge wears its neon lights like jewellery in the dark water.

I went to Cambodia feeling the ambivalence I usually feel about Cambodia. I am not a fan of the country in the way I am a fan of Vietnam or Thailand or Nepal. The tourism infrastructure around Angkor Wat is exhausting. Phnom Penh has a heavy atmosphere that I find difficult to separate from its history. But Kampot is different enough from both that it deserves its own assessment.

The Town

The old part of Kampot is a grid of French colonial buildings — wide balconied facades in faded yellow and ochre, ground floors turned into cafes and guesthouses and restaurants. The riverfront promenade has been developed for tourists without being completely ruined. There is still a working town behind the tourist strip — markets, motorcycle repair shops, Khmer families eating at plastic tables on the pavement.

French colonial building in Kampot Cambodia decorated with neon lights at night
A faded-ochre French colonial facade dressed up for the evening — the kind of street that holds the town’s rhythm.

The atmosphere is slower than most Cambodian towns. The heat encourages it. The river moves slowly. Cats sleep on window ledges above the street. By mid-afternoon almost everything has paused, and the town picks up again around five when the temperature drops slightly and the guesthouses fill with people who have been out on the river or up at Bokor Hill.

The Pepper

Kampot pepper is worth understanding if you care about food. The combination of the local soil, the tropical climate, and the traditional drying methods produces a pepper with a complexity — floral, mildly spicy, with a long finish — that industrial pepper from other regions does not replicate. During the Khmer Rouge period the plantations were largely destroyed. Farmers began replanting in the 1990s with help from European buyers who wanted to revive the product for high-end markets.

You can visit the farms — several have opened for tours. Buy directly from the source and you pay Cambodian prices for something that sells in European delicatessens for fifteen euros a small jar. Green pepper, red pepper, white pepper, black pepper, and the prized “la lot” pepper wrapped in wild pepper leaves. Worth buying in quantity if you are staying long enough to carry it.

Bokor Hill

Above Kampot, on a plateau at nine hundred metres, sits the Bokor Hill Station — a French colonial resort built in the 1920s and abandoned twice, first during the Khmer Rouge period and again during the civil war. The ruins of the old casino and hotel sit in the mist, frequently cloud-covered, genuinely atmospheric in the way that colonial ruins in Southeast Asia can be before they get fully restored and turned into a heritage attraction.

A large casino resort opened on the hill some years ago, which has changed the character of the plateau considerably. But the old ruins are still there, and on a misty morning the combination of crumbling concrete, tropical vegetation growing through everything, and the cloud cover at altitude produces an atmosphere that is unlike anywhere else in Cambodia.

Why Kampot Works When Cambodia Doesn’t

I think what separates Kampot from most of Cambodia for me is scale. The town is small enough that it does not overwhelm you with the accumulated weight of the country’s recent history in the way that Phnom Penh does, and it does not have the industrial tourism infrastructure of Siem Reap. It is a manageable Cambodia — a place where you can sit on a riverfront terrace, eat well, drink local palm wine if you find it, and exist in the country at a speed that allows it to be pleasant rather than grinding.

The expat community here is a mix of long-term Cambodia hands, people who intended to stay two weeks and stayed two years, and retirees who found that their pension goes further in Kampot than anywhere else they had considered. The restaurants they have opened are good — better than you would expect for the town’s size. The craft beer is decent. The coffee is excellent, grown in the region and roasted locally.

The Lost Kitchen Greek restaurant in Kampot Cambodia
Greek cuisine in southern Cambodia, owned by someone who came for two weeks and is still here. Kampot does this.

Practical Information

Getting there: From Phnom Penh, take a bus — several operators run the four-to-five-hour route for $7 to $12 USD. From Bangkok, you can take a bus that crosses the border at Hat Lek / Cham Yeam and continues to Kampot, roughly ten to twelve hours total. From Siem Reap, it is a long day’s travel — fly or go via Phnom Penh.

When to go: November to April is dry season and the most comfortable. May to October brings the monsoon — Kampot is green and atmospheric in the rain but some activities are limited and the river rises significantly.

How long to stay: Two to three days minimum to see the town, get up to Bokor, and visit a pepper farm. A week is easy if you like the pace. Many people stay longer than planned.

Budget: One of the cheaper destinations in Southeast Asia. Guesthouse rooms from $10 to $25 USD per night. A good restaurant meal with a drink for $6 to $10. The town rewards slow travel and a small budget.

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