Cambodia's forgotten Belle Époque — a ghost-town of French villas by the crab market, where the Gulf of Thailand laps a coast that kings once called their playground
Kep (Krong Keb) is Cambodia's smallest province and a beachside retreat of 40,000 people on the Gulf of Thailand, 168km southwest of Phnom Penh. Built as an elite French colonial holiday resort from 1908, Kep was one of the most fashionable seaside destinations in Southeast Asia until the Khmer Rouge emptied and torched it in 1975. The French villas remain — most still in various states of elegant ruin, reclaimed by jungle or slowly being restored — alongside a working crab market where fresh Kep crab (kampot pepper crab) is sold daily off the boats. Kep National Park offers hiking through dr…
Kep-sur-Mer was established in 1908 as an exclusive French colonial seaside retreat — Cambodia's equivalent of the Côte d'Azur — with a sweeping seafront promenade, grand villas for colonial administrators, and later a royal summer palace for King Norodom Sihanouk. After independence in 1953, Kep remained a playground for the Cambodian elite. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Kep during their march on Phnom Penh, forced the entire population to evacuate, and systematically destroyed the villas — looting them of everything portable and burning what remained. When Cambodians returned after 1979…