KAMPOT ON THE CUSP
Along NATIONAL ROAD 3 from Veal Renh to the riverside town of Kampot, the Damrei Mountains appear as an impenetrable, forested wall. A branch of the Cardamom range that extends across 110 kilometers of southwest Cambodia, they top out at the misty plateau of Mount Bokor, a once-abandoned French hill station that on clear days offers views across the Gulf of Thailand to the Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc. On this Sunday morning, a troop of leather-clad motorcyclists from Phnom Penh has congregated at the entrance to Preah Monivong National Park to charge up the 37 kilometers of twisting asphalt to Bokor’s summit, along a road that, thanks to a 2008 upgrade, is arguably the best in the country.
Laced with good hiking trails, Bokor is a defining presence on the Kampot skyline. But it’s not the only reason to make the three-hour drive from Phnom Penh (or, as I have done, the two-hour drive from Sihanoukville to the west). Some people come for the nearby seaside, or to eat at the increasingly eclectic mix of restaurants—Nola for Cajun cuisine; Tertúlia for Portuguese; Baraca for tapas—that have sprung up on the east bank of the Tuek Chhu River amid the old town’s French-designed grid of faded shophouses and government buildings. Others (myself included) are simply drawn to Kampot’s irresistibly languid ambiance and the joys that come with taking in the cool breeze as it
