Things to Do in Kampot: The Alternatives Guide
By Jason for Discover Kampot
Kampot has more going on than most visitors ever discover. Here's where to look.
Search Kampot online and you’ll find the same list of attractions from ten years ago: Bokor, La Plantation, Kep. The famous spots are worth doing. But there’s a lot more here than anyone’s telling you.
Here’s what’s worth finding.
Kampong Trach: The Best Day Trip from Kampot
Most people who rent a motorbike in Kampot make it to Kep and stop. It’s twenty-five minutes down the road, where there’s a crab market, a beach, and a small national park to walk around in. But just fifteen minutes further is some of the most striking scenery in the region, popular with Cambodians but largely undiscovered by Western tourists.
Kampong Trach has dramatic limestone hills, cave temples, rice fields full of water buffalo, and traditional wooden villages. Before the wars it was a popular destination in its own right. Then the Khmer Rouge came, the region was devastated, and it quietly disappeared from the tourist map. It’s only now starting to find its way back. The caves that were used as shelters during the American bombing campaigns of the early 1970s are now full of temples, shrines and Buddhist statues, many with guides waiting at the entrance. The kind of place you can easily lose a full day in.
Further reading
Kampong Trach: Kampot's Best Kept Secret
Forty kilometres from Kampot, the small town of Kampong Trach sits among dramatic limestone hills, jungle caves, rice fields, and almost no other tourists.
Kampot Pepper Farm Tours
La Plantation is the name that comes up first in any Kampot search. But there are several farms in the area running tours, and they’re not all the same.
Some are large visitor sites with restaurants and full infrastructure. Others are smaller family operations, more personal, more rural. A few care as much about sustainability or forest restoration as they do about pepper. All of them walk you through the vines and explain how black, red, white, and green pepper come from the same plant at different stages. The tasting usually surprises people. Entry is typically free.
Which one fits depends on what you’re after. For a full breakdown, see our pepper farm guide.
Further reading
Kampot Pepper Farms: Which One Should You Visit?
Trying to choose between La Plantation, BoTree, Sindora, and Sothy's Pepper Farm? Here's how Kampot's best-known pepper farm visits compare.
Sunset River Cruise in Kampot
A few years ago, Kampot’s riverfront, where the seahorse statue is now, was famous for the dozens of riverboats parked along the riverside, filling up with tourists for Kampot’s famous river sunset cruise. When the riverside was renovated, they had to move. But they’re not far. And if you know where to find them, you can still enjoy one of Kampot’s classic experiences.
You’ll find them just past the new bridge. Show up around 5:30pm, get on a boat, and for as little as $5, including a free drink, take a relaxing cruise up the river as the sun goes down over Bokor, watching longtail fishing boats heading home for the evening, and if you’re lucky, fireflies flickering along the palm-lined shore on the way back.
Further reading
Koh Tonsay: Island Paradise
Koh Rong and Koh Rong Sanloem are exactly what they promise: beautiful islands with beaches, bars, parties and a reliable Southeast Asian good time. If that’s what you’re after, they deliver.
But if you want somewhere quieter, somewhere that still feels like an island rather than a destination, Koh Tonsay is worth knowing about. Known as Rabbit Island, it’s a short ferry ride from Kep, which is itself only twenty-five minutes from Kampot. Far closer and easier to reach than the Koh Rong islands.
Bungalows on the beach, hammocks, fresh seafood. Power runs for a few hours a day, which is either a drawback or the whole point. If you genuinely need electricity, the operators will run a generator for a small fee.
The perfect setting for lounging on the pristine beaches in a hammock and enjoying a good book.
Further reading
Rock Climbing and Caving in Kampot
Every Kampot itinerary includes the waterfall hike. The waterfalls, however, have almost no water in dry season.
If you want a physical activity that gets you into the best of Kampot’s scenery, Climbodia is hard to beat. Climb to viewpoints with some of the best scenery in the region, or descend into caves filled with stalactites and Hindu shrines that predate the Khmer Empire. Either way, you’ll see parts of the mountain that most visitors never get near.
Climbodia has been running tours out of Kampot since 2013 and operates the largest climbing site in Cambodia. All climbs are top-roped, meaning the guides hang the ropes for you, so you’re focused on the climbing rather than the rigging. There are plenty of beginner routes for first-timers, and enough variety to keep experienced climbers busy. The site is cool, shaded and dry all year round.
Every guide is a local young person with many years of experience and first aid certification. Climbodia runs a fair-wage operation and takes the cave’s ecosystem seriously.
Book via climbodia.com.
Further reading
Kiteboarding in Kampot
Cambodia’s dive sites pull a lot of people down to Sihanoukville and the islands. Kampot doesn’t come up much in that conversation, which is why it catches people off-guard: it’s one of the better kiteboarding spots in Southeast Asia.
Cambodia Kiteboarding has been running IKO-certified lessons out of Villa Vedici riverside resort in Kampot for twelve years. Lessons are held on the Kampong Bay estuary, 7km downriver from town: a wide, shallow bay with warm water and enough space that you’re not worrying about other kiters while you’re still figuring out what you’re doing. On a clear day, you can see Bokor Mountain in one direction and Phu Quoc Island in the other. Most kiteboarding destinations in Southeast Asia have one wind season. Cambodia has two, running from December through to early October with a change of direction in between. Which means that whenever you’re visiting, there’s likely to be wind.
Beginner packages through to advanced. Book via cambodiakiteboarding.com.
Further reading
And we haven’t even mentioned the food. For the best places to eat in Kampot, check out Where to Eat in Kampot: Clear Recommendations for Every Kind of Meal.