Cambodia's coast is hidden treasure - for now

The simple bungalows for rent on Cambodia's Rabbit Island may soon be replaced by a planned five-star resort.

By Margo Pfeiff
The San Francisco Chronicle
Friday, February 24, 2012
See more photos at The San Francisco Chronicle.

The ceiling fan is doing its lazy whoop-whoop above my big rattan chair as I sip weapons-grade coffee and watch a rural morning parade: monks in pumpkin-colored robes, trios of uniformed schoolkids balancing on a single bike, and pedal-powered tri-shaws heading to market carrying pyramids of mangos.

It seems like a good time to join the parade, before it gets too big.

I hop on my own wheels - a clunky buck-a-day single-gear Chinese-built rental bike - and set off in the relative morning cool to explore the riverside town of Kampot on Cambodia's south coast.

Lining the small grid of roads is a remarkable collection of faded French colonial shop houses, crumbling villas and grand administrative buildings: Some are on the verge of collapse; a few are dressed up and chic again. Street vendors sell warm baguettes or sweet-smelling crepes as men roll boules in the shade and Edith Piaf murmurs through tinny loudspeakers.

I cycle up dirt tracks to find Muslim fishing villages tucked among the mangroves or deserted Buddhist temples. For the most part, the biggest cycling hazards are scraggly roosters and bare-bummed toddlers.

After three hectic weeks working in Phnom Penh ("PP" among expats), one of Asia's fastest-developing cities, I had hopped the three-hour bus to the coast for some much-needed R&R.

Kampot was once Cambodia's biggest port, and the nearby village of Kep had been the beach resort for French expats in the 1960s until it was abandoned in the face of civil war, its luxury villas gobbled up by jungle during the nightmarish reign of the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.

On my last visit to Phnom Penh in 1997, this area was still dangerous, but over the past decade the coast has again become a popular weekend getaway for Phnom Penh expats, especially the chaotic beach party town of Sihanoukville, which I steered away from in favor of quieter Kampot/Kep and its tropical islands.

What I found, to my surprise, was a rare Asian gem, low-key, still rough around the edges and not yet developed except for a few dozen guest houses, small resorts, cafes and restaurants run by colorful expats mostly from Britain, France and Australia.

So far it's off the radar except for adventurous, mostly European, solo travelers and backpackers. But not for long: The bulldozers are already humming in the distance.
House of history

Stepping inside the Rikitikitavi Inn, the place half-buried in bougainvillea, I immediately extend my three-day stay to seven. Owner Dom Price left his British home in 2000 on a Honda 650 dirt bike, arrived in Cambodia three years later and never left.

He restored this old riverfront house that tells the region's history: It was the French rice export office, a Khmer Rouge theater complete with posters of happy peasants, then a military barracks during the 1980s Vietnamese occupation.

"During reconstruction we found buckets full of bullets," Price says.

An hour later I run into French-born artist Vincent Broustet when I stop at the stylishly out-of-place Jolie-Jolie Spa near the Art Deco Old Market building, currently being restored. Broustet exhibits his work in Siem Reap galleries near the Angkor Wat ruins and on the walls of his wife's salon: Five minutes after meeting him, I'm on the back of his motorbike, bumping along back roads as he points out his favorite local hangouts.

There's not a lot to do in Kampot and that's its charm - apart from a simple country market, a bookstore and a few local craft boutiques, there's not even much shopping. A faded colonial-era nostalgia makes you want to simply chill out over a frosty Angkor beer sampling specialties like fish amok, a Cambodian coconut curry that is the national dish.
And it's an easy place to relax: The U.S. dollar is the reigning currency and it's safer than pickpocket-riddled Phnom Penh, even at night when everyone emerges from snoozing away the day's heat and the riverside establishments perk to life as families saunter the waterfront promenade snacking from pushcarts lit by glowing propane.
Images
The simple bungalows for rent on Cambodia's Rabbit Island...A temple in Kampot.A farmer tends his fields in the countryside outside Kamp... View All Images (7)

Every day at 4 p.m., $5 buys a two-hour, no-frills sunset cruise in a skinny "long-tailed" (long-propped) boat heading with a few passengers upriver or down, into tropical wilderness past simple fishing villages.

Darren Knight, an Aussie expat, offers the occasional dinner cruise downriver to a huge sandbar for a seafood barbecue.
Architectural gems

Before Sihanoukville became the country's main port in the '50s, the French built more than 500 colonial buildings in this small town, including lavish architecture like the restored governor's residence.

The colonial and Art Deco treasures remind me of Old Havana and the once rundown rooming houses that lined 1980s South Beach in Miami before their restoration into pricey hotels.

When I find a ramshackle architectural gem with a new day job like the Red Cross office and the mildewy Department of Tourism, I ask in bad Khmer if I can poke around inside - no one says no.

One of the more intriguing structures is a grand affair with rounded balconies, a parapet and the sign: "Magic Sponge - restaurant, bar and mini-golf."

"A magic sponge is what revives injured soccer players," says the American manager, who goes only by William.

This budget guest house, popular late-night snooker bar and Indian restaurant was once the regional headquarters for Acleda, Cambodia's leading commercial bank, says William. "The bar is where the tellers once were," he says, leading me through 4-inch-thick carved hardwood sliding doors and up a circular terrazzo staircase three floors to high-ceilinged rooms.

One of the area's biggest attractions is the once-elegant 1920s French casino and mountaintop resort, Bokor Mountain Hill Station. Abandoned in the 1940s during the War of Independence from France, it's now an eerie place often shrouded in fog. The grand buildings where glitterati sipped Champagne stand empty, gathering a surreal coat of orange lichen, the perfect location for the final scene in Matt Dillon's movie "City of Ghosts."

Despite Bokor's national park status, in late 2011 a new summit road was carved into the mountain for a huge development including a casino, several hotels, a golf course and something called Buddha Religion Land, all now under construction.

Luckily, the colonial ruins are being restored and there are still hikes to waterfalls and occasional sightings of wild elephants and other creatures in the jungle.
Where pepper grows

I hire a driver named Chak to take me in his pink-upholstered tuk-tuk - a small, motorized, open-air chariot - to Kep, 17 miles away. We pass coastal salt harvesting ponds and drop in at sprawling, hillside pepper plantations.

Kampot pepper filled the grinders of the best Paris dining rooms until the Khmer Rouge sent everyone to the rice paddies, but since 2000 Kampot white, red and black pepper has been replanted and is sought after in European and Asian gourmet shops.

Kep is not really a town so much as several dozen resorts, many of them bungalows from low- to high-end with on-site restaurants, dotting a tropical mountainside above a kilometer-long beach created by the French with barged-in sand.

During Cambodia's 1960s Golden Age, Kep was a jet-set hideaway with hundreds of modern villas inspired by famed contemporary French architect Le Corbusier. They called the place Kep-sur-Mer, the Cambodian Riviera.

While a few of the grandest villas have been restored, including the 1968 Villa Romonea that reopened as a luxury resort in 2010, many more were demolished or abandoned, including Cambodian King Sihanouk's mansion - still riddled with wartime bullet holes, overlooking the beach.

I wander through some villas where trees grow up through shattered angular flat roofs and tropical tree roots ribbon through windows and doorways like some Beatles-era Angkor Wat.

Climbing minimalist staircases, I step over cow patties left by wandering cattle dotting elaborately tiled sunken living rooms that remind me of party scenes from Pink Panther movies: I can't get the theme song from "What's New Pussycat?" out of my head.
Images
The simple bungalows for rent on Cambodia's Rabbit Island...A temple in Kampot.A farmer tends his fields in the countryside outside Kamp... View All Images (7)
The middle of nowhere

Dinner that evening is a pile of crabs topped with a rich coconut milk sauce laced with twigs of fresh local green peppercorns at the Crab Market, a cluster of rustic eateries on stilts over a small Kep bay. Outside, fishermen keep crabs fresh in floating wicker baskets until they're ordered; peering down between the floorboards, I see the bay beneath my feet.

A 25-minute boat ride from the Kep Pier takes me for the day to tiny Koh Tonsay (Rabbit Island), a tropical outpost of white sand beaches, palm trees and a few no-frills thatched-roof bungalows for rent by local families who also serve up killer Kampot pepper-grilled seafood.

It feels like the middle of nowhere.

When I finish up my beachside massage with a coconut shake, toes wriggling in the sand, I look across to Kep at the big nondescript waterfront hotel about to open and listen to expats at the next table talking about the five-star resort planned for Rabbit Island and possibly a casino outside Kampot.

Definitely nowhere, but for how long?
If you go
Getting There

Kampot is about three hours by air-conditioned bus from Phnom Penh or two hours by taxi. Bus: $6 one way. Taxi: about $45-$50 one way. Hotels can usually arrange tickets and pickup.
Where to eat & sleep

The best inns and B&Bs are often also the best places to dine.

The Columns: 37 Phoum 1 Ouksophear, Kampot, 855-92-128-300, www.the-columns.com. Elegant boutique hotel in a multilevel 1921 row house with a French colonial atmosphere. From $35 double including continental breakfast.

Rikitikitavi Inn: Riverside Road, Kampot, 855-12-235-102, www.rikitikitavi-kampot.com. Seven Asian-style rooms from $40 double, full breakfast included. The upstairs restaurant is likely the best eatery in town. Entrees: $4-$8.

Mea Culpa Guesthouse: No. 44, Sovann Sakor Village, Kampot, 855-12-504-769, www.meaculpakampot.com. Quiet inn surrounded by gardens. Doubles from $35. On-site pizzeria with excellent wood-fire oven pizzas. Entrees: $5-$8.

The Veranda: Kep Mountain, Kep, 855-33-399-035, www.veranda-resort.com. Tropical mountainside resort with thatched-roofed bungalows. From $37 double with breakfast. The restaurant, on-site bakery and ice creamery are popular with Phnom Penh weekenders. Entrees: $5-9.

Villa Romonea: Prey Thom, Kep Thmei, Kep City, 855-12-879-486, villaromonea.com/home.html. A rare restored luxury villa on a 5-acre waterfront estate. From $150-$300 double, breakfast included.

Kimly Seafood Restaurant: Waterfront crab market, Kep, 855-89-822-866. The best of a string of rustic waterfront crab shacks known for its fresh crab with green peppercorn sauce. Entrees: $5-$10.
What To Do

Dreamtime Kampot Sunset River: Old Market Street, 855-899-08-417, www.kampotluxurytours.com. Traditional long-boat sunset river cruise to a sandbar with wine, cheese and seafood barbecue. $25 per person.

Jolie-Jolie Beauty Salon: Next to Paris guesthouse, Kampot, 855-929-36-867, joliejolie-kampot.com. A lemongrass-scented oasis of pampering with manicures, pedicures, oil massages and more. Treatments from $4-$27.
More Information

Coastal magazine: www.coastal-cambodia.com

Travel Fish: www.travelfish.org

Kampot Survival Guide: www.kampotsurvivalguide.com

Margo Pfeiff is a freelance writer living in Montreal. travel@sfchronicle.com