Kampot, googling suggested, was not exactly overburdened with tourist attractions. But we’d known that before we came here, viewing it as a reasonably chilled way of segueing back into the world of motor vehicles ‘n that after our week on the island.
Still, the Old Market, when we reached it, came as a bit of a surprise. Not least because there was no market. None at all. What was billed as the market was an old French-colonial building, very run down, with parades of shops – most closed – running round the outside. There was one pathway into the interior, which proved to be a dark and borderline sinister jumble of god knows what, no stalls or anything resembling them, with one or two people lurking about in the shadows for no apparent reason. Oh.
Still, the listings for it had suggested that it was worth a visit if only for its location, in the middle of the old colonial section. Which did indeed have its charms. Albeit tatty and very rundown. Shutters on upstairs windows, New Orleans-style verandahs, and the occasional rather elegant art deco building – the one above being now a restaurant/bar whose swimming pool could be used if you spent at least $6 on food & drink. It was almost worth it, just to see what kind of swimming pool such a building might have. But we’d left our togs back at the gaff, so that was that. Just for the hell of it, we took a little detour to see the roundabout sculpture of the durian fruit. A fruit whose smell is apparently so appalling that you actually see signs all over this part of the world featuring a simple line drawing of the thing with a big red cross through it.
After that, options seemed thin on the ground, but there was reference to the ‘tiny but interesting’ Provincial Museum, which piqued my interest. Such places tend to be very hit & miss, but when they hit they can be really rather special. I once spent a couple of hours happily browsing the one on Islay – also tiny, but full of a just wonderful collection of totally random stuff, from old farming implements and dolls to the machine gun some enterprising local had extracted from a crashed German plane before the authorities arrived. Sadly, when we looked up the way to get to this one, Virle discovered it had closed down. Oh.
So we went down to the river, where you got a lovely bit of breeze coming up from the sea, and a nice view, including one of the recently-reopened bridge, largely destroyed by the Khmer Rouge as part of their mission to return what was left of the country to the stone age. The right end in the pic is the original bridge, as built by the French. The other two-thirds now consists of a crude pontoon-stylie construction perched on the original concrete supports, and carrying a steady stream of scooters and tuk tuks (nothing heavier allowed), as well as the occasional idiot tourist. (The bloke working on the blue wall, BTW, wasn’t a street artist but a workman, preparing the wall for, I presume, a repaint. Spotting me taking his pic, he didn’t take offense but on the contrary seemed delighted to be thought photo-worthy, giving me a beaming smile and a friendly wave.)
Then back to a likely-looking restaurant we’d spotted, for a rather nice lunch, before heading back here to our bungalow for a chilled afternoon – in my case including a swim in the river that’s about a minute’s walk from the front door of our cabin: warm, brackish and placid to a fault, its far bank lined with palm trees and reeds. Lovely!