Kep City - One of Cambodia's Best Kept Secrets

Seam Reap, home of the famed Angkor Wat temples, has long been a favorite destination for visitors to Cambodia. With the demise of the Khmer Rouge, the decline in violence, and an improved economy, Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital, is also becoming a desired place for tourists to this ancient Southeast Asian kingdom.

While there's a lot to see and do in Phnom Penh, including Wat Phnom, the Buddhist temple in the center of the city, and from which the city derived its name, there are also a number of interesting places within a day's drive or less of Phnom Penh that are worth being on your itinerary.

Kep, a Paradise in Plain View

Located some 173 kilometers, or approximately 90 miles, from Phnom Penh, the coastal city of Kep is a gem of a vacation spot for the first-time visitor to Cambodia and the veteran traveler alike. There are a number of ways to get to this seaside resort town which was founded in 1908 during the time when Cambodia was a French colonial outpost, as a place for the colonial administrators to go and relax. During the 1960s, when then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk was consolidating his political power after Cambodia's independence, Kep was renovated into an exclusive report for the Cambodian upper class.

From Phnom Penh, Kep is approximately four hours by car, going south on National Route 3 or National Route 2. You can also take the Phnom Penh-Sihanoukville train to Damnak Chang Eur, which is about 7 kilometers (3.5 miles) from Kep City, and take a taxi into town. For any but the most intrepid, the wisest course is to hire a car and driver in Phnom Penh. Rates vary from company to company, and are often open to bargaining.

Kep is a small town, with approximately 1,000 meters of beach, but the reason to visit is not swimming; it has, without a doubt, the best seafood restaurants in all of Cambodia. Beachside restaurants offer the catch of the day, and diners can watch their meal being offloaded from the fishermen's boats and taken to the kitchen.

The Best Place to Stay and Things to Do

To really enjoy what Kep has to offer, spending the night is the best idea. There are a number of inns and small hotels, but The Beach House is the best. Located on a rise facing the beach, its $30 per night ocean-view rooms are hard to beat. Rooms are air conditioned and have satellite TV and a refrigerator. And, with only one main street that runs through the town along the beach, it's a snap to locate.

The Beach House

www.thebeachhousekep.com

The first thing you'll want to do after spending four hours on the road is to wash up and dive into a seafood supper. Then, after a good night's sleep, a motor trip to Bokor Plateau, a drive of about two hours, to see the burned out hulk of the old French casino and a view of Vietnamese islands that look like their only wading distance of the Cambodian coast, or a boat trip to Rabbit Island, a half hour from Kep Beach, will introduce you to some little known wonders of Cambodia.

An Unforgettable Landmark

One last thing about Kep that will make a visit there unforgettable is the statue on the beach at the entrance to the town. A large white statue of a nude woman, which is sometimes draped in cloth in deference to certain Buddhist holidays, sits serenely glancing down the beach in the direction of Sihanoukville. No one remembers who put the statue there, or why, or what its suppose to represent. The best guess of many locals is that the French erected the statue when they founded the town, as a symbol of its resort status, and subsequent government administrations, including the Khmer Rouge, simply ignored it. Whatever its origins, this twelve-foot tall statue, in a land of Buddhist temples and shrines, jumps out at you like a neon sign on a dark night.