Cambodia: Kampot - a recipe with durian, pepper and crab
- Where To Go Next By I&P
- Jan 26, 2023
- 4 min read
After visiting the 2 most known cities in Cambodia, Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, we continued our tour of the country by going to Kampot, a city with a unique position in Cambodia between the sea and the mountain, close to Sihanoukville and famous for its pepper.
We took a Giant Ibis bus for 10USD/pax to go from Phnom Penh to Kampot. The trip lasted 4h and went pretty well. The Giant Ibis company is a trusted bus company in Cambodia for trips between Cambodian cities but also to Ho Chi Minh City, and we were not disappointed.
When we arrived in Kampot, we discovered a very small city with mostly 3 storey buildings, a multitude of small shops, and a durian roundabout.
Although we had this Big Durian Roundabout, there were no actual durians to be found 😭.
Our hotel was on the other side of an old, narrow bridge that we had to cross to get to the city center. It was quite an adventure every time we had to cross it, as the motorcycles were passing by 30cm from you. Despite that, we enjoyed our time at our hotel, the Kampot Coco, as the hosts were extremely nice.
The town itself is not very interesting except for a lotus pond (but at the time, the lotus were all dried up making the place a little bit sad) and the night market area where we noticed a concentration of French speaking people (and even a Portuguese restaurant...with a french employee 🤣).
The town is known for its proximity to the Bokor National Park, to Kep Beach and its delicious crab, and to the pepper farms.
We hired a driver for the day to see all of these places.
Bokor national park is 1h away from Kampot, not because it's far but because of the winding roads that go up the mountain. It is a vast forest on top of a plateau that was enjoyed by the French to cool down from the heat during the French protectorate (until 1949).
There we found a fantastic view of the surrounding land and of the nearby Vietnamese island of Phú Quoc. The view was particularly breathtaking from Wat Sampov Pram, a Buddhist temple on the edge of the plateau. The view of the stupa overlooking the area is iconic.
However, the area seemed to be a ghost town, with a lot of houses but not a single person around, only dogs. 👻
Another ghost building there was the Bokor palace and its church.
The palace was built during the French protectorate and it claimed the lives of one thousand Cambodians workers. After being used by the French, and later on by wealthy Cambodians, to escape the heat and enjoy the view, it became a war fortress for the Khmer Rouge, and nowadays, it's been transformed into a hotel.
As we were leaving the park, we went to see the 29m-statue of Lok Yeay Mao, a mythic courageous woman from Cambodian Buddhism and who is said to protect explorers, travelers and hunters. I pay my respects hoping she helps us continue our trip safely 🙏.
After the fresh air of the mountain, we went to experience the heat near the sea at Kep Beach.
Kep is a town on the east side of Kampot and has been known since my parents' childhood days as a place to go to eat some delicious crab. But, when we arrived there, several women assembled around the car to take us to their restaurants so we quickly fled and went to the Crab Market instead.
The market was a long line of restaurants along the sea, partly built on a jetty, and we obviously decided to try the crab and enjoy the ocean view.
After lunch, we took a dirt road to see the pepper farm called La Plantation.
A French-Belgian retired couple fell in love with the area and decided to try to revive the Kampot pepper bio farming in 2013. They started this socially responsible enterprise, which not only created jobs for locals, but also invested in young Cambodians' education by building a local schools. We learnt a lot about the Kampot pepper: the production and the consequences of global warming, the different types (green, black, red, white, long red) and, at the end of this complimentary tour, we could even taste each one of them. I could spit fire afterwards! 🐲
It was really interesting to know more about such a common ingredient and see how we can enjoy it in so many different ways.
We finished our day tour with a view of the salt farms on the way back to Kampot.
The next day, we said goodbye to this marvelous country of Cambodia as we headed back to Phnom Penh to catch a bus to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
We were really amazed by the temples of Angkor, by the growing city of Phnom Penh and by the view from Bokor National Park, and I was personally grateful to learn more about the history of my country of origin and my family.
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