The Best of Cambodia & Laos

164
SOUTHERN CAMBODIA
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KOH KONG
bar staff. Utopia on the road to Serendipity is a very late-night bar and disco. The bar
staff here is made up of young Western backpackers, and the place has a kind of unpleasant
and druggy vibe. Avoid Victory Hill, now home to a slew of depressing and sleazy
“hostess” bars. One of the best and most bizarre places to party in Sihanoukville is at the
Airport on Victory Beach. This Russian-owned place is a disco hangar in which there is
a real Antonov 24 prop plane. Until very recently these dubious machines were in service
flying to Siem Reap and Battambang—the ramshackle airborne shower that was President
Airlines. It is a welcome sight to see this one firmly decommissioned and grounded.
They serve a full range of cocktails and it gets hopping only after 10pm. It is a beach bar
during the day. It is place that could be truly called bizarre beyond bizarre. The Fishermen’s
Den and Sports Bar downtown is the place to catch the game of your choice.
They show a full range of sports.
2 KOH KONG
Koh Kong was long a strange kind of place. Better reached from Thailand than Cambodia,
it was isolated from the rest of the country by the Cardamom Mountains. One could
reach Sihanoukville on a dangerous hydrofoil—a boat designed for rivers unleashed on
the open sea and crewed by men with no maritime skills who couldn’t swim. The town
gained a reputation among Khmers for being a place where “the bad people go to find
money” and indeed its reputation for drugs, prostitution, gambling, smuggling, and
crime was not unfounded. With the opening of the border crossing to Thailand, tacky
casinos mushroomed catering to Thais, since gambling in Thailand is illegal. That image
is now changing. The bridge across the Kah Bpow River to Thailand was completed in
2003 and National Rte. 48 to Srey Ambal and on to Phnom Penh was finally finished in
2008 when the last bridges became operational. This is Cambodia’s most scenic road
(built by the Thai army) and it winds majestically past wonderful mountains and forests
kept pure and pristine by decades of war. With these recent improvements Koh Kong is
no longer a sleazy transit point pinioned by hills and rivers; it is now coming into its own
as a prime location for eco-tourism on one of Asia’s most important highways conveniently
near the roaringly popular Thai resort island of Koh Chang. As makeovers go, the
one now transforming Koh Kong looks to be pretty dramatic.
GETTING THERE & GETTING AROUND
From both Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville there are regular bus services. From Phnom
Penh, Virak Buntham Express Travel (012/322-302) departs at 8am from Street 106
on the waterfront (the return trip also departs Koh Kong at 8am). If you are coming from
Thailand, you can take a minibus (costing 100 Thai baht and leaving from right in the
center of town next to the market) from the town of Trat to the border at Had Lek on
the Thai side crossing to Cham Yeam on the Cambodian side. From there it is a 10-minute
motorcycle ride (costing 50 Thai baht) to Koh Kong itself. The ferry service to Sihanoukville
has been discontinued and is unlikely to reemerge (if it does, it will no doubt
resume being both overpriced and dangerous, so it’s best avoided).
Koh Kong itself is small and easily walkable. It is set out on a very simple grid stretching
back from the river. If you need a ride, there are plenty of motodups hanging about.
Usual rates of between 1,000 riel and 2,000 riel apply.