The sleepy town of Kampot
Came for the peppercorn, stayed for the reishi mushroom coffee
My last morning in Cambodia, I hopped in a shared van parked just outside the bus station in Old Kampot. It was not even 9 am and it already 35 degrees (Celcius) outside—the retired French tourists and German backpackers sharing the van with me were already dripping with sweat. I took my seat and opened the podcast app on my phone, preparing myself for the 10-hour bus ride ahead of me. I looked out to the front of the van and could see the riverfront, so calm just a block away. This view was my morning routine for the two weeks I was in Kampot. Suddenly, the van's engine started and it seemed like we were ready to take off. One of the guides stood up to give us a little debrief of our journey ahead. He told us it would be about 2 hours to the Vietnamese border, then we'd all have to get off and carry our bags through immigration and then they'd meet us on the other side. We'd change buses just after the border, and then it would be another 7-8 hours to Ho Chi Minh City. Then the man paused, clapped his hands together and said to us, "Thank you for choosing to visit Cambodia."
Nudged in between Thailand and Vietnam, Cambodia can get forgotten. And let's not even get started with Laos, the landlocked middle child of Southeast Asia.
I arrived in Kampot late in the evening on a Sunday. Without a local SIM card in my phone (I thought I'd be in Cambodia like a week, so I never bothered to get one), I walked about 100 meters with my bags to the most promising looking restaurant. This place had mostly fish hot pot on the menu, and everything was written in Chinese. I ordered a beer (Cambodian) and got the WiFi to get my bearings and then call a TukTuk using my Grab app to take me to my hostel.
In Cambodia, it's TukTuks instead of motorbikes. And they're these old TukTuks too, made of old scraped wood with intricate carvings on either side. Most have their wheels barely hanging on—at least it sounds that way. But I rolled through Siem Reap and Kampot on them. I liked catching these when I was traveling between bus stations to a guesthouse because I could fit all of my bags next to me. In Thailand, I'll get the motorbike driver to carry my smaller, carry-on backpack in the front with him while I hang on to my larger backpack behind me, as we zoom through the Bangkok streets in the open air.
I checked into a hostel called Traders Kampot—it was a little outside of town but it had a rooftop and an in-house restaurant and bar so I splurged on the extra $2/night cost ($7 USD compared to $5 at most of the other hostels in town). Before going to bed I looked at myself in the mirror of the en suite bathroom in this 6-person shared dorm. I didn't look so bad, given the long day of travel that I'd had from Siem Reap with a midday stop in Phnom Penh. For a minute, I forgot my age and pretended that I was a young 29-year old, still so curious about the world and with so much to do. I'm still her—still ambitious, always curious, but a little tired. One nice conversation at a hostel bar doesn't completely turn my mood anymore after a long day. I no longer believe love is right around the corner, or to be found in the next country—I just have to get there first. But I took this win, the one staring back at me in the mirror, and then tucked myself in my bottom bunk that was next to the only window in the room and I woke up to the first light of sun the next morning.
A TukTuk picked me up from the hostel around 8:30 to take me into town. As we rolled into Old Kampot, we drove along the riverside and I immediately felt the water energy as the morning scene of the Praek Tuek Chhu River widened in front of us. Ice cream and other types of food carts were parked by the river, kids ran on the sidewalk, grandpas flew kites, and the traffic buzzed along the bridge. I realized I hadn't really seen water in a while, other than my one afternoon in Bangkok that I spent at a restaurant along the Chao Phraya River just a few weeks before. Chiang Mai has a moat and a narrow river, but no open water spaces. The day was just starting to get warm and I breathed in that water energy, knowing that I'd probably stay in Kampot longer than a couple of days.
We kept driving towards the cafe I was going to for the day, and I noticed a run down, open-air bar on the corner across the street from the river that was filled with some retired Western men. It was barely breakfast time. One Khmer woman was standing there behind bar, opening their Angkor Beers and listening to their rants. I ended up having to walk by that place whenever I was finishing up for the day and there would be a new batch of men parked out front, drinking and ranting. Or maybe it was the same ones—I can't really tell that demographic apart.
Kampot + peppercorns for days
One random fact that I love sharing with anyone you'll listen to me is that Cambodia has some of the best pepper in the world. Whole peppercorns are grown and dried to perfection in the warm, tropical lowlands of Kampot in green, red, black, and white. Smoky and salted. Organic and juicy. The berries burst in your mouth when you pop one in and I can't get enough. Seriously, it seems like all I do in Cambodia is eat pepper. I remember sprinkling some on my eggs at my guesthouse my first morning in Siem Reap—nervous that the taste wouldn't be as pungent and perfect as I'd remembered, but I was proven wrong. The spice just hits different.
I learned this during my first visit to Cambodia back in 2019. I remember being at a little pepper shop in Kampot and sampling all the bits of peppercorn that they had on offer. A little kid ran up to me from the backroom as his mom swept around the shop, and he took one of the samples and just popped a whole peppercorn in his mouth. This kid was barely 3 years old. "Pepper!" He exclaimed. Another evening during my visit I sat at a restaurant by the pier and enjoyed a Bloody Mary with a salted rim of smoky Cambodian pepper. I still think about that cocktail. I guess I'd compare eating non-Cambodian pepper to being served a sweet pickle when you think you're getting a real, deli-style dill pickle. It's just unfortunate.
Most days in Kampot, I had a routine of an early morning at a veggie & yoga cafe hidden away in a quiet block called "Little Alley." It was a welcome recluse from the “It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere” vibes just a few blocks away along the riverside. I kept coming back here because it was just so quiet and inviting. And I could actually get work done. I'd sneak in just after they'd open at 8—it would smell of incense and I could hear a yoga class going on upstairs. The owner would just let me sit there and type while music played and he'd slowly get the cafe going for the day. I went to the cash area to order when I was ready, and people would linger down after yoga or linger in just after 10 for breakfast. The cafe had a simple menu: smoothie bowls of whatever fruit they had fresh for the day, kimchi and avocado toast, bagels, and a few other pastries. They also had a simple Americano with an added serving of reishi mushroom powder, and this kept me fueled all day.
Working at cafes all the time if you travel like I do isn't sustainable, but I love taking a break from my routine of co-working spaces or too-long days working at home, when the French Press gets refilled 2-3 times and I don't even realize that the sun has set. Getting lost and found in one afternoon while I write reminds me of why I started this life of travel in the first place. I love looking up from my laptop screen and seeing a new piece of art of the wall, hearing a new playlist, or looking outside and catching a glimpse of local life.
If I'd still have stuff to do when the yoga cafe closed, I'd go to one of the other veggie places in town that stayed open well into the evening. I'd order a different veggie item from the menu each time (they had delicious pizzas) and sip a smoothie. Sometimes it was a glass of wine or local beer. Cambodia has so many more options when it comes to drink compared to Thailand. There's even locally-brewed Kampot cider. Each town has a few breweries, and you can buy wine at the local shop like you're in Europe. The French history here lingers—you see it in the crumbling old buildings and taste it with a sweaty Chardonnay paired with your fish amok.
I made a friend one night at my hostel's pub quiz night and we spent the following afternoon exploring Bokor Hill and national park. She had the motorbike and I jumped on the back of it while I navigated our way up the mountain just outside of Kampot. We talked about solo travel and writing through Southeast Asia. She shared with me about how she fell in love with Siargao in the Philippines and just wanted to go back. Other than that one afternoon of adventuring and a sprinkling of conversations back at my hostel, I wasn't staying long enough to realistically try and make any local friends. Plus, I had plans to make a home away from home in Hoi An, Vietnam for the next few months.
My last two nights in Kampot, I stayed at an adorable little guesthouse even further outside of town. It had three floors with individually-themed rooms based on a piece of Cambodian history and run by a Khmer man and his German husband. Traders was fully booked and I was waiting for my e-visa for Vietnam to get approved. I took advantage of my new room (with a desk!) and spent my evenings taking client calls.
The first night I checked in, I got an email that my visa was approved. "I'm going to Vietnam," I whispered. I was giddy. I sent a voice note to my friend, Eva, who was already traveling through Vietnam with a friend, and I confirmed with her that we could meet up in Hoi An. I spent my last day in Kampot getting a bus ticket to Ho Chi Minh City and touring another pepper farm. Memories of my first arrival in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) flashed through my mind. It was a place where I started again. That journey ended up taking me out of Vietnam, but I'll always remember that it started there.
So there I was again. I looked at my life in front of me, my backpacks and my laptop on the desk with notebooks and to do lists—the stuff I've carried with me through 5 continents over the past year. The guesthouse was on a quiet street and the closest shop was about a kilometer away, so I decided to stay in for my last night and eat at their in-house vegan cafe, savouring my spicy and warm veggie amok. I walked up to their little rooftop and caught the last moments of sunset, the sky was almost completely orange as we were in peak hot season on this late day in March. I wondered what the sky was looking like in Chiang Mai, so far away hundreds of miles west. But that night I went to bed with dreams of heading east to Vietnam. I'd be in Saigon by evening.