We stayed a couple nights in Kampong Cham, and so could spend an entire day exploring this small city. Kampong Cham is not a major tourist city, but has a few things that it’s known for. It’s population is mostly Cham, a Hindu minority in Cambodia. Women wear head scarves and you can see mosques in the city. During the genocides of Pol Pot in the late 1970’s, the Cham people lost about a quarter of their population since they were disproportionality targeted by Pol Pot. This entire region has seen more than it’s share of strife.
One of the “must experience” things in Kampong Cham is the bamboo bridge connecting the mainland to the island of Koh Pen, as well as the island itself. Prior to 2016, the bamboo bridge was the only way to cross the Mekong to Koh Pen, and the bridge was sturdy enough for small cars as well as scooters, tuk tuks, and pedestrians. In 2016 a concrete multilane bridge was built, eliminating the need for the annual building/re-building of the bamboo bridge according to the schedule of floods on the Mekong. Each year before the wet season started in June, the bamboo bridge was dismantled by hand and the bamboo stored for rebuilding, a month-long process. A ferry took residents and school children across the river during the time there was no bridge.
After the new concrete bridge was opened, local people decided to build a smaller bamboo pedestrian/bike bridge in 2019 so that tourists could experience the bamboo bridge. It’s costs about $2 for a round trip ticket to ride across the bridge and it was certainly cool!
The surface of the bridge is strips of bamboo tied/wired together, held up by bamboo poles rammed into the river bed. It’s noisy and undulating as you cross. In the beginning it all seems a bit rickety, but it’s just flexing as you ride. The tide was going out when we came back, showing just how low the river is at low tide.
We rode around Koh Pen island once we got there, which is a quiet lovely place with traditional houses and temples. It was definitely worth a visit. The scale and beauty of the temples, and how well kept they are is amazing.
After that, we crossed the other concrete bridge to see the French Lighthouse, which is not really a lighthouse at all. It was a watchtower to survey the area for attack. You can climb to the top, but the stairs are very steep and tall and so I just went the first 2 stories. That was enough!
The market was just a couple blocks from our hotel, and so we rode through and then walked the Main Street later that evening, when the heat was abating. There’s tons of street food at night, including grilled fish, frogs, chicken and other meats, as well as the ubiquitous trays of snails that are sold along every roadside. We had some snails in Hanoi so we tried them there!
And finally, we had a drink at the rooftop bar of our hotel, a brisk and lovely breeze cooling us high above the street. We had dinner downstairs and the prepared for an early start the following morning for our final ride of the Cambodia segment of our trip.
Leave a Reply