Things to do in Kampot

Kampot is very much a town to chill out. There's a bloke from Manchester who runs the Rusty Keyhole Bar on the front overlooking the river. Good place for breakfast and for happy hour followed by English football! The Bamboo Light Café does a superb Sri Lankan curry and there are several other good restaurants along the front.

Also on the front you can go for a shiatsu massage. It cost just $4 for a one hour massage given by blind people. Just what the doctor ordered after an arduous trip to Bokor.

Other main excursions include trips to local caves, Kep and Rabbit Island.

If you're heading for Vietnam from Kampot take a look at Vietnam to Cambodia border crossings. We crossed at Phnom Den (Cambodia) to Tinh Bien (Vietnam) which is near Chau Doc. You're alternative is to return to Phnom Penh first.

Bokor Hill Station

Construction of the road up to Bokor began in 1917 and once completed the luxurious Bokor Palace Hotel was constructed and a small community developed there. In later years it became a Khmer Rouge stronghold thanks to its altitude at 1080m which gave it commanding views over the countryside.

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We'd paid our $10 for the excursion ($5 extra to enter the national park) and were collected at 8am. Seven of us climbed onto the back of a truck with the guide whilst two more got inside with the driver. I hardly know how to start describing just how awful the state of the road was. If any fast talking tour rep. tries telling you that their trip is any more luxurious then try to find out why because with the state of the road all journeys to Bokor must be nothing short of an ordeal.

The first 22kms to our first stop at the Black Palace was nothing but potholes making for a very bumpy ride. Also the vegetation had grown across the road so whilst being shaken all over the place you have to keep an eye out for branches waiting to whack you across the face so you spend most of your time with your head between your knees.

Shortly after the Black Palace we stopped to do a one hour jungle walk that seemed quite pointless. We weren't taken to the nearby Popokvil waterfalls as they were (apparently) dry when we visited. The truck then met us and took us the remaining 10km to the top where we had a nice lunch outside the abandoned Bokor Palace from where there are great views across to Vietnam's Phu Quoc Island.

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We then took a walk around the other abandoned buildings including a casino where drunken soldiers had fired their guns into the ceiling and a Catholic church with its altar still intact. Then we embarked on the torturous 32km return trip downhill to a boat which was supposed to get us back just in time to see the sunset from the river approaching Kampot town. Unfortunately, we arrived late and missed the sunset but the cold beer onboard was more than welcome.

With hindsight would I have done the trip? No I probably wouldn't. Personally I found the rewards of arriving at Bokor Hill Station didn't justify the journey. But that's just my opinion, others didn't seem to mind so much so give it a try and make your own mind up.

Kampot Cambodia

We booked a private taxi transfer to Kampot from our hotel in Sihanoukville for $25. Others we met in Kampot told horror stories of "shared taxis" which were standard cars with upto nine people in them. In one case the driver had a passenger to his left and it was a left hand drive car! Operating the pedals seems to have been something of a team effort.
It's a two hour drive through beautiful scenery. Satisfactory accommodation was difficult to find at first. The Bokor Mountain Lodget overlooking the river was well overpriced in such a sleepy little town at $36 a night. The Borey Bokor hotel was fairly run down and completely empty. We settled for the very pleasant Kampot Guesthouse ($12) where rooms are far nicer in the new block than the old one. There are several other nice looking guesthouses on the same street.

There's not a great deal to do in Kampot but it's a charming riverside retreat where I could have quite happily lazed away a number of days. Instead we headed off on our first full day to do the main excursion that's available to the old French hill station of Bokor.

Bokor National Park

Established by the French as a hill station, Bokor had its heyday in the 1920s and has since been abandoned twice, during World War II and the Khmer Rouge period. It was established as a national park in 1993 and spans four Cambodian provinces and despite substantial illegal logging, remains home to elephants and perhaps tigers.

The entire Bokor region saw fierce fighting between the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge -- at one stage one side was holed up in the Catholic Church and the other in the casino -- all the while trying to shoot each other to pieces. Both buildings still bear the scars today.

Walking through the crumbling casino/hotel and other buildings dotted across the Bokor ridge is a little spooky, particularly if one of the frequent mists roll in, but it's easy to imagine what it must have been like once upon a time. When we visited we pulled up in front of the casino a mere 10 metres away, yet couldn't see it for the mist -- on clear days however the views are apparently spectacular.

At least one Vietnamese horror movie has been filmed on Bokor, along with the reasonably well-known Matt Dillon film City of Ghosts and we suspect more may be in the pipeline.

If time allows it's worth spending a night on Bokor, as even though the accommodation is only very basic (dorms), the food very limited (instant noodles) and the drink selection rather poor (warm beer), it is nevertheless an interesting and very beautiful place to visit. The two-tier Popokvil Waterfall is certainly worth a trip, though as it's 4-5km from the casino, it's best to have your own transport.

As of October 2008, the road to the top of Bokor -- which is under construction and has been mostly repaved by a private company -- is technically closed to the public. However, like anything in Cambodia, it's still possible if you're willing to pay a little extra to bribe the right people -- this was certainly the case during our last pass in August 2009.

The way to navigate the graft process is through a guesthouse or a travel agency in town. A one-day trip to the park, which will have you trekking half way up and riding a 4WD the rest, costs $35, including lunch. About $15 goes to bribing the company that owns the road while another $5 pays for the standard park entrance fee. For an overnight trip, expect to pay about $40. You'll walk the whole way, saving your guide on gasoline, hence the similar pricetag to the one-day trip. In low season, we managed to negotiate a one-day trip for $25, but don't expect these days to pay any less to see Bokor.

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