Pepper, colonial riverbanks, and the best sunsets in Cambodia
Kampot is a small riverside town in southern Cambodia that has become one of Southeast Asia's most beloved slow-travel destinations — a place of crumbling French colonial shophouses, firefly-lit river cruises, and the world's most acclaimed black pepper grown on the surrounding hillsides. Bokor Hill Station, an abandoned French colonial retreat on a misty mountain above town, is one of the most atmospheric ruins in all of Asia. The river promenade fills with barbecue smoke and hammock-strung guesthouses at dusk, and the nearby beaches of Kep are 30 minutes away.
Kampot was a major port town under French Indochina from the 1860s, exporting pepper, dried fish, and salt across the empire — the pepper cultivation infrastructure the French established remains largely intact today, making Kampot pepper one of the few Cambodian products with a protected geographical indication. The Khmer Rouge emptied the town entirely in 1975; residents were not permitted to return until 1979, and many of the colonial villas still show the marks of that abandonment.