Cambodia & Tourism: A short trip to Kampong Cham

Kampong Cham is the most densely populated province in the kingdom. The city is divided into four districts: Kampong Cham, Veal Vong, Boeung Kok and Sambour Meas, and has 31 villages.

ខេត្តកំពង់ចាម, port of the Chams

Under the French protectorate, the town was an important commercial crossroads and transportation center: tobacco, soybeans, rubber trees and other tropical products were grown and exported. Kampong Cham is nicknamed Cambodia's white gold, with its rubber plantations and large rubber-processing factories operating for almost a century.

The bamboo bridge

The “Kizoa” is a bamboo bridge, rebuilt every year by hand after the monsoon season. It crosses the Mekong to Kao Paen, an island in the middle of the river.

This 800 m-long feat of sustainable engineering has become a symbol of the city. The support structure is made up of thousands of bamboo poles held together by cabling.

The surface is made up of four layers of bamboo mats capable of supporting up to four tons of load.

Wat Nokor Bachey temple

This historic temple is located two kilometers northwest of the city. It is a pre-Angkorian temple dating back to the 11th century, during the reign of Suryavarman II, one of the kings of the Khmer Empire. The latter worshipped the Hindu god Vishnu, the protector. Everything built on this site is directly linked to this deity.

The centerpiece of the temple is a 19th-century pagoda with interlocking roofs of orange, green and blue tiles. Wat Nokor is a little jewel nestled in the heart of rice paddies and palm trees. It is renowned for its Buddhist-inspired decorations, notably its finely crafted pediments and bas-reliefs.

Today, it's home to Vat Theravada, a pagoda recently built using the old sculptures. Here, you can sometimes meet brides and grooms posing for a photo shoot, as well as numerous Buddhist monks at prayer.

The hills of Phnom Pros and Phnom Srei

Phnom Pros and Phnom Srei are two hills on the outskirts of Kampong Cham. They face each other and each is topped by a pagoda.

The climb to Phnom Srey is fairly arduous, 308 steps to the summit, but the 360-degree panorama over the whole region more than makes up for the difficulty of access.

To visit Phnom Pros hill, you have to brave a colony of monkeys, the guardians of the site: long-tailed macaques. At the bottom of the stairs, take a detour to see the reclining Buddha and some magnificent stupas.

The old French lighthouse

The old lighthouse overlooking the Mekong opposite the town of Kampong Cham, also known as “The Old French Lighthouse”, was built by the French during their occupation of Cambodia in the 1920s, and has since been restored.

It was used as a guard post to protect rubber plantations from brigands travelling up the Mekong.

If you're tempted to climb to the very top of the Old French Lighthouse, you can contemplate a global view of the whole city and the Mekong River from the top of the lighthouse.

Additional photographs by Christophe Gargiulo