Kep sunsets
More pics from the archives; this time a selection of images of Kep sunsets taken during our last visit to the small Cambodian coastal town. We thought of Kep since we’ll be down there again in a couple of weeks on our next Beyond Angkor – off-the-beaten-track Cambodia tour – which we’re very much looking forward to. Originally known as Kep-Sur-Mer, the town, replete with holiday villas, hotels and the obligatory casino, was a popular seaside resort for hot and sticky colonists during the French era and a haunt of the post-independence Khmer elite before getting totally trashed during the war years of the late 70s.
View from the Crab Market with Phu Quoc on the horizon Accounts vary as to whether it was destroyed by the Khmer Rouge – seeing the villas, hotels and casino as undesirable symbols of bourgeois decadence – or whether it was destroyed by the Vietnamese liberators who saw it as…. well, probably undesirable symbols of bourgeois decadence? Anyway, on with the pretty pics!
Looking across Kampot Bay to Bokor Mountain The town’s famous Crab Market or Phsa Kdam, lies opposite our charming little resort, the delightfully low-key, friendly Mealea Resort and, with its well-situated cafes on stilts over the sea, is our venue of choice for sundowners and sunset photographs. The mountain in the background of a couple of the images, looking across Kampot Bay, is Bokor Mountain. Kampot town itself lies some 20 kilometres west along the coast.
Kep sunset from the Crab Market The sun sets behind the island of Phu Quoc – today officially belonging to Vietnam since the French established the borders on granting independence, but a long-standing sore point with the Khmers.
Anyway, looking forward to getting back down there for another chilled beer in the Crab market and some more Kep sunsets.
You can check our Beyond Angkor tour, our Kep, Kampot and Takeo mini-tour or add-on, plus all our other Cambodia offerings at our Cambodia destination page.
