Waterfalls and French Resorts in Kampot
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2010
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31
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Trip End
Jan 07, 2011
Kampot, Cambodia
Thursday, November 4, 2010
After leaving Phnom Penh, we decided to take a bit of a detour South, to the small town of Kampot. Kampot is a quiet, riverside town, which mainly seems to be known for two things - its pepper plantations, and an old, abandoned French hillside resort. We didn't take the bus we wanted from Phnom Penh, because our guesthouse "forgot" to book it for us. Irritating, but not a huge deal - there was another one 2 hours later, which we got on.
The bus trip took about 5 hours, and was pretty uneventful - we got to Kampot, found a place to stay, and booked a trip up to the abandoned hillside resort for the next day. The resort is known as the Bokor Hill Station, and was originally built in the 1920's as a place for the French to get away from the heat of the nearby lower lying areas. It was abandoned in the 1940's when the Cambodians were fighting for independence from the French, cleaned up and re-opened again in the 50's, then re-abandoned in the 1970's when the Khmer Rouge began taking over the country. Since that time, it's been largely untouched.
The trip to the hill station was pretty interesting - we took a minibus from town with a group of about 16 folks to the entrance to the Bokor National Park (the hill station is in the park). From the entrance, we had to get onto the back of a pick-up truck that had been fitted with some benches for a ride up the hill. After about 20 minutes, the pick-up stopped, and we were told we needed to hike about an hour and a half up hill. We set off, accompanied by a park ranger carrying a semi-automatic rifle. Our guide told us not to worry about the rifle - the ranger had no intention of shooting us, but instead carried it to protect us from wild animals, which was very reassuring. (Also reassuring was when we took a break and someone from our group asked to look at the ammo clip on the rifle - it was pretty rusted.) Curiously, animal attacks must only be a concern when ascending, because on the way down, the ranger that accompanied us was armed only with a small water bottle.
After we came back out on the road, we were picked up by the same truck (which kind of made you wonder why we couldn't just have ridden the truck the whole way up), for another short trip up to the hill station. As advertised, it was kind of creepy - there's quite a few buildings, including a large hotel/casino, a church and various smaller buildings that you can wander around in. When we were given some free time to explore, Sarah and I took off down a road, and found ourselves in the ruins of what looked like an old villa. We then walked back to the large hotel, and then on to the church before we left. They're currently planning on building a big 5-star resort with over 600 rooms near the abandoned buildings, including a golf course. It seems like a bit of a weird concept - it's pretty windy up there, and I'm not sure they'd ever fill the place...I guess we'll see what happens. After we got back into town, we went on a short river cruise that was included with the hill station tour, which was a nice way to end that day.
The next day, we decided that we wanted to do something a little bit more 'off the beaten track', so we talked to a tour operator in town about doing a combined bike/hike to a nearby waterfall. Well - the track we went on certainly wasn't beaten! It was just Sarah, myself and our guide, and we were told it would be a 5km bike ride to the trail, followed by an hour hike to the waterfall. After about 1.5kms, we turned off the sealed road on our (single gear, very heavy) bikes, and onto a packed dirt road. The dirt road wasn't too bad...but then it started getting fairly narrow...then it started getting very sandy. Riding a bike in sand is pretty damn hard - that's an FYI. After alternating between walking and riding for a few kilometres, we finally came to the trailhead. It had taken us almost an hour to 'ride' 5km - yikes.
Once we started walking, we saw that this was going to be another one of our classic hikes, that involves more scrambling up steep rocks than actually walking. After about 45 minutes, we reached the waterfall, which looked so beautiful that we quickly forgot the effort involved in getting there. We had the place to ourselves, and spent about an hour there relaxing, taking pictures and swimming. We then climbed up to the top of the waterfall, to have lunch on top of the smooth rocks that were up there. It was a great spot, and was really relaxing. The hike/bike back into town seemed a lot easier than our trip in the morning (probably because it was mainly downhill). Although it was quite a bit harder than we'd anticipated, it was really an awesome day - hiking through the jungle and swimming under a private waterfall is a great way to spend your time, I'd say.
Oh - and while we didn't visit a pepper plantation (people we talked to who had done it all described it as a fairly underwhelming experience), we did enjoy a lot of awesome food made with 'Kampot pepper'. Next up, we have a looong travel day, taking a bus back to Phnom Penh, and then on to Siem Reap...
