This is a guide to what's actually there, written by neighbours rather than by someone passing through.
What Kampot is like
A grid of two-storey colonial shophouses, many of them peeling, some restored into cafés and guesthouses. A riverside where everyone goes at sunset. A night market, a fishing fleet, and a traveller scene that has been there long enough to feel settled rather than brash.
It is a town for staying a few days and doing not very much, interrupted by a day out to the mountain or the pepper farms.
The river
The Praek Tuek Chhu runs past the town from the Elephant Mountains to the sea, and almost everything in Kampot happens in relation to it.
- Sunset on the water is the standard evening. Boat trips go out most days from the riverside
- Kayaks and paddleboards are rented all along the front, and the water is flat enough for beginners
- Firefly trips run after dark in the mangrove stretches — best on a dark night, away from the full moon
- The old French bridge is worth walking across for the view back at the town
Bokor Mountain
The road up Bokor is the best half-day in Kampot: an hour of hairpins to a misty plateau with an abandoned 1920s hill station on it. We've written a separate guide to Bokor with what's at the top and how to get up there.
Pepper farms
The pepper that makes Kep crab worth eating grows in the hills behind Kampot, and several farms take visitors. Our guide to Kampot pepper covers which farms, what they cost, and what the different colours actually mean.
Caves, salt and the Secret Lake
Clustered on the Kep road and usually done as one circuit:
- Phnom Chhngok cave temple — a 7th-century brick shrine inside a limestone cave, reached up a staircase. Local children offer to guide you through with torches
- The salt fields — flat, bright pans between Kampot and Kep, worked by hand in the dry season. Striking in the late afternoon, closed-looking in the wet months
- The Secret Lake — a reservoir built under the Khmer Rouge, which is the part most tours leave out. Quiet, and worth the detour for the view rather than the swimming
Most guesthouses sell this as a half-day tuk-tuk circuit. Done as a combined day tour with a pepper farm, reckon on around $25 per person.
Eating and drinking
Kampot has the restaurant scene that Kep doesn't: a night market, riverside bars, wood-fired pizza, proper coffee, and more Western food than you probably want. The town's own thing is the pepper, which turns up on everything.
Our Creation Café and the Arts Cafes are in Kep rather than Kampot, so this isn't us touting for business — ask locally and you'll get better answers than any list we could write.
How long to stay
Two or three nights. One day on the river, one for Bokor, one for the caves-and-pepper circuit. If you're also doing Kep — and you should — see Kampot or Kep for how to split your time.
Getting there
Kampot is about 3–4 hours from Phnom Penh and 30–40 minutes from Kep. Full detail, with current fares, is in getting to Kep and Kampot.
Where to stay
We're in Kep, not Kampot, so we're the wrong people to ask about rooms there. What we would say is that plenty of people base themselves in Kampot and day-trip to Kep, and that it works better the other way round — our bungalows are five minutes from the crab market and the national park gate.