{"id":3191,"date":"2026-03-18T04:48:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T04:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aerowalsh.com\/cr\/?p=3191"},"modified":"2026-03-21T17:54:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T17:54:52","slug":"tue-17th-mar-kampot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/?p=3191","title":{"rendered":"Tue 17th Mar – Kampot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Most of today is spent touring around the natural bounties of the Kampot region. Then I get wiped out by food poisoning. Again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kampot’s fresh water river mixes with the salty ocean to give the town the right ingredients for salt production. It can only occur during the dry season. These rice-paddy-like beds are flooded and then as the sun dries them the salt can be raked into piles. Once piles are made, the bed will sit like that for another week while the sun evaporates the remaining water away so that the salt piles are dry. The mounds of salt are then scooped up and stored.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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In the countryside, abutting farm land, is a cave where a 1000 year old temple lives. It is older than Angkor Wat, dated to the same period as ancient Egypt.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Contemplating the long history of this unassuming structure. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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In the fields behind the cave, monks help the surrounding community with their farming. Our tour guide says that it’s a poverty stricken temple stuck in a depleted countryside, so the monks, who cannot rely on the donations of a large population, need to assist in order to be fed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Dad, I chuck your A$20 in the donation box at this temple. Apparently your name gets to go on a wall outside the temple to thank donors, so look out for that when you come to Kampot. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Down on the fields this lady is tending to her seedlings. The young plants are covered by palm leaves to keep them out of the direct sun.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Then we visit a big pepper farm.

There’s heated discussion at the back of the bus between me, OTL and the good (Pearl-looking) Canadian about the providence of this farm. It is owned by a French couple and very, very popular with tourists. They offer an hour tour, offer pepper tastings and have a very inviting shop\/cafe area. In other words, it is successful. There is discontent that much of the profits do not go back into the local community and that it is exploitative of local labour and land.

I have sympathy for this argument but, as sad as it is to admit, the non-local owned businesses are just better. These people see a way to take cheap resources and make an appealing product. The Gibbon Experience in Laos was also owned by a foreigner and it was easily the best organised tour that we did in the country. Even the Save the Bears was started by an Australian… The locals just have too many day to day issues to deal with. They’re not focussed on the medium term growth of a tourist product. They need money today and will provide a service with the bare minimum costs to achieve this.

I don’t mention it for reasons of social cohesion but we are all paying an Australian based company for this tour… No one here chose a Cambodian organisation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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I’m pro-pepper farm. We go on a tour around the farm and learn about the plants. The different colours of pepper come from the different ages of the berry, so one single little bunch can contain a mix of light green, green and red berries. Kampot pepper is so well regarded, it’s now a protected geographical food product, like Parma Ham in Italy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A seafood lunch is included in the cost of our tour, one of the few such meals. What could go wrong?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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After lunch, we stroll through the local market where much of the fresh seafood is sold.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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I’m enjoying that Kampot is getting behind the Big Things mascots. They had the big seahorse in town, and then by the water we’ve got Mr Crabs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Recognise this brand? Yes, that’s right, I must have angered Mr Crabs because that seafood lunch does not sit well within me. In fact, it refuses to sit full stop. I am violently ill for an hour, unclear by the end what exactly it is I am vomiting up. My dignity? If I indeed come back ‘tanned and thin’, it won’t have been of my own volition. I am apartment bound for another evening and order a Grab cheese pizza dinner. I end the night again thinking that it’s time to go home.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Produce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thailand-laos-cambodia-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3191"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3211,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191\/revisions\/3211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}