Things to see in Kampot, Cambodia

Kampot is a small city on the south coast of Cambodia near to the Vietnamese border. It’s a lovely, quaint little town with beautiful mountain and ocean scenery around it. We spent a week here and loved it! There is plenty of hustle and bustle in the town and you don’t have to venture far to find the natural beauty. So you can definitely have the best of both worlds here! The best way to get around and see stuff is by motorbike – it cost us $4 plus fuel for 24 hour hire.

Here are some things to see around here:

Kep beach, market and national park

The seaside town of Kep is just a 25 minute scoot down the road and is definitely worth a visit. The drive down is beautiful and when you get to Kep you are greeted with lovely blue ocean waters. The beach is nice enough and the crab and seafood market that runs during the day is fun to wander around and full of tasty ocean critters! We enjoyed some deliciously huge prawns while watching a very perfect sunset from the market.

Just before you get into the town of Kep you can turn off up a red dirt road to get to the national park. There is a 8km circuit walk around it, which is largely flat and shaded. It’s mostly very peaceful with stunning views, and you get to enjoy the company of monkeys here and there! There are maps along the route and you can also venture up into the jungle if you’re feeling more adventurous. We headed up the Nun’s Path to get to Sunset Rock (main pic). This is, shockingly, a west-facing rock where you can watch the sun go down from the jungle! We were there a bit early so just enjoyed a daylight view, which was equally as beautiful despite the rain that started when we got there. It had been a sweaty hike up there, though, so the rain was actually quite welcome! You can get to sunset rock without doing the full circuit walk – I’d guess that it would take you about an hour to get there from Kep beach. Just beware some rather unfriendly dogs on the Nun’s Path.

Bokor Mountain National Park

You can’t miss out Bokor Mountain if you’re in Kampot. The drive from the centre of town to the top of the mountain will take you a good couple of hours. It’s a spectacular drive up the mountain! You have the mountain jungle on one side and ocean views stretching out to Phu Quoc Island on the other, as you meander your way up. It’s stunning! When you get to the top you can enjoy the view from the big meditating Buddha, before heading into the main area. There is a big map on entry and I’d been told it’s $1 to get in but we were waved through without being charged.

The area at the top of the mountain is quite bizarre. If you turn left at the roundabout one of the first things you’ll come across is an enormous hotel and casino complex. It’s quite the eyesore. But the Chinese temple next door is cute! Carrying on up the road you can enjoy the abandoned shell of an old Catholic Church, which was pretty cool, and further along still is a post-apocalypse-looking abandoned casino.

The casino has been unused (for its original purpose anyway) since the French deserted it in the 1960s but there were workmen crawling all over it when we got there. This stopped us going in to explore and also suggests that it will be in use again in the relatively near future. I have read it may become a museum, but we’ll see!

Weird and abandoned architecture aside, there is also lovely natural beauty to discover at the top of the mountain. If you turn off next to the aforementioned eyesore hotel/casino and follow the road for 10 minutes or so you’ll reach the 500 Rice Fields. These aren’t actual rice paddies, they are rocks that are strangely formed in straight lines with grass poking up between them. This got its name as people say it looks like an aerial view of 500 rice fields… but you may have to use your imagination ha!

Heading back down to that first roundabout, if you take the other road it’ll take you to the Popokvil falls. You have to pay 50c to enter the area at the top of the waterfall, but you get a small bottle of water thrown in with your ticket. The falls are quite impressive and you can stand right at the top. The water had a strange colour to it that looked yellow as it tumbled over the edge and a tea-type red in the shallow pool below. On your way back from the waterfall you can also take the right turn to pop down to the mountain lake. This is signposted along the way with ‘water dam’ and is really worth taking time out to go see. It’s really beautiful! You can hire a kayak or swan pedal boat, or just watch the sunlight twinkling on the water as we did. Aside from a couple of Cambodians having a photo shoot, we were completely alone down here. It’s a gorgeous spot – probably the most beautiful that we saw on the top of the mountain. 🙂

Arcadia hostel and water park

If you are backpacking in Kampot you simply must visit Arcadia Backpackers! This little hostel is just outside the town – you’ll need to get a tuk tuk or hire a bike – and is also a water park! It’s right on the edge of the river, surrounded by palm trees and, with hammocks all around, it’s the ultimate chill out spot.

Unless, of course, you’re taking on some of the water activities! They have a massive slide that bends up at the end and fires you into the air, as well as a rather dodgy zip line and many things to jump off of into the river. There’s also the blob. This is a big inflatable cushion where one person sits on one end while two other people jump onto the other and launch the victim into the air! I did the slide several times, it’s terrifying but SO much fun! Although the slap of the water can be painful if you don’t get those toes in first. I was too chicken for the blob but George braved it! He looked like a rag doll being thrown into the air! If the adrenaline-fuelled splashing isn’t for you, simply just relax in a tube with a beer!

Arcadia is such a fun place and has a great bar with games and a pool table for socialising on a night. It’s the same price to visit the water park for the day as it is for a dorm bed or half a basic private, so you may as well stay the night. 🙂