Phnom Penh is ground zero in a reawakening Cambodia. Gleaming SUVs navigate streams of tuc-tucs and motorcycles. Outside celestial Wats vendors hawk hats, sunglasses and “something special sir” on litter blighted streets. And in the riverfront bars, men reddened by too much Cambodia Beer and the fierce Cambodian sun, cavort like beasts freed from the confines of the zoo.
Yet this was not the wild we sought. We were simply passing through this feral borough of the global village, exchanging buses en route to what we’d heard was the least developed quarter of the country: Cambodia’s wild east.
Five hours traversing tarmac that had seemingly been smeared across the land like butter delivered us somewhat disquietingly to Kampong Cham – the so-called gateway to the eastern provinces. My travel companion Jack Bailey and I alighted the bus and resolved to stroll off the journey.
We walked past the bustling central market place, flanked by fading French architecture, towards the mighty Mekong River. Kompong Cham proved more of a provincial town than a city per se. Though I’d read that it was the biggest conurbation in the east of the country, it only took us ten minutes to traverse it on foot.
On the far side of the river a salmon-pink lighthouse stood out from the forest and shacks that otherwise dominated the panorama. This exotic colonial structure recalled a time when this was a prosperous, cosmopolitan port in French Indochina. In its heyday in the 1920s and 30s, Kompong Cham was a place where Cham Muslims, Chinese merchants, French administrators and the local Khmer traded rubber and tobacco with the wider world.
We found a stretch of hotels and eateries occupying a line of converted colonial waterfront buildings. After securing a room and a meal at Moon River, an amenable guesthouse and restaurant, we set out to obtain some wheels.
The diminutive man who rented us the motorbikes provided us with ill-fitting helmets and a photocopied hand-drawn map with French directions.
“Is this all you have?” enquired Bailey, who’s mane of dreadlocks couldn’t fit in the red plastic hard hat.
He nodded and smiled.
“This is the only map you’ve got?” I asked.
He nodded and smiled.
Not wishing to elicit another nod and smile in response to questions about the weak brakes on the bikes, we cautiously rode off to discover what Kompong Cham had to offer.
Despite dusty, pot-holed roads, we soon came upon several sites of interest. The twin hill temples of Phnom Pros and Phnom Srei (literally Man and Woman Hills) were just two kilometres out of town as the crow flies. Behind Phnom Pros was a grey concrete temple topped with pagodas that made it a tad reminiscent Angkor Wat in style. Here we met a snack vendor.
“Sir, buy bananas?” she called.
“That sounds like a good idea,” I said to Jack.
But no sooner were we stocked-up on nutritious fruit for the journey than a colony of wild monkeys emerged from the surrounding woodland and began to accost us.
“Feed the monkeys sir!” called the snack vendor, and soon we were liberated of our nutritious dinner.
The adjacent peak Phnom Srei wasn’t home to any hungry simians. Instead, much to Bailey’s alarm, it entailed a stiff hike up a stairway to a hilltop Buddhist retreat. Though aesthetically unremarkable, the temple summit awarded us with fine vistas of the surrounding farmlands, softly yellowing in the dry season.
Kompong Cham’s principle spectacle, however, proved to be Wat Nokor. Using the French photocopied sketched map, we somehow found this architectural marvel hidden in the grounds of a modern temple complex. There were the usual orange robed monks busying between prayer halls outside, and farmland blended with the Wat pressing us to negotiate a herd of belligerent white cows that were grazing between the shrines just to get inside.
But as we ventured forth, it became apparent something really remarkable lay before us. The dilapidated remains of the original Wat had been constructed in the eleventh century at the latter end of the legendary reign of Jayavarman VII. Though painted black during the sinister Khmer Rouge period and modernised with some rather tawdry fixtures, it was still extraordinary to get up-close and personal with architecture born of Cambodia’s golden age, unhampered by the crowds that blight Angkor and other top sites. The detail of the sculpture was exquisite, bringing to life in minute detail the flourishing world of the Khmer Empire, when Cambodia had been a regional superpower and cultural powerhouse.
After dark, we retired to Moon River for an evening doused in Angkor Beer. The next day, attempting to escape our hangovers, we ventured across the remarkable bamboo bridge that linked the river island of Koh Pbain with town. The bridge is washed away each rainy season and rebuilt anew in the autumn. Though crude, it delivered us (along with several cars, roaming livestock, motorbikes and pedestrians) to an insular island community of farmers and fishermen.
It was here we made our next prodigious find. Amongst the stilted farmhouses, Wats and fields of tobacco, was the Mekong Bamboo Hut Guesthouse. A tribe of Westerners playing cards, swimming in the river and generally getting high, recalled the kind of hippie commune common to avant-garde 1970s hippie flics.
“How much is it to stay?” I asked.
“A hammock is $2 per night,” said the man behind a makeshift bamboo bar, who I later found out was co-owner Max Foucher.
“Shall we stay Jack?”
Bailey just gave me a look that said ‘we’d be insane not to’.
And so we integrated ourselves with this community of gap year students, NGO workers, world wanderers and Phnom Penh expats out for the weekend. Over wine and cheese – this was a French operation after all – I spoke with owners Max Foucher and Helen Fajerot about their remarkable eco-lodge.
“We were travelling and had a visa problems so we stayed here for ten days. The previous owner said they wanted to sell it and we decide to buy the place,” Fajerot explained candidly of their serendipitous acquisition.
I asked how long they planned to live in such a remote locale.
“As long as it’s fun,” said Foucher, casually, before adding, “you know in the rainy season the water floods the place so we close-up and go travelling or back to France.”
Overlooking the Mekong I found a wooden terrace. As the sun set, casting a haunting tangerine haze across the water, the call to prayer was broadcast across the water from a Mosque on the distant riverbank. Kompong Cham is home to sizeable population of Muslim Cham people. The town’s name actually means Gateway to the Cham.
“I like the sound,” said a French NGO worker who’d previously been stationed in Egypt.
I had to agree, the ancient wail of the Takbir was strangely captivating as we enjoyed the timelessness of the great river rushing by.
“Where will you go next?” he asked.
“Further east.” I said. And we toasted to travel.
