Kep

Kep exists because of the French. In 1908 colonial administrators laid out Kep-sur-Mer on a quiet stretch of the coast below a forested hill, building a sanatorium, a small port and seaside houses for officials from Phnom Penh and Saigon. Its position — sheltered, cooler than the plains, a short ride from the pepper farms and the port at Kampot — made it a convenient escape, and it stayed a modest resort through the colonial period.

Its brief golden age came after independence. Through the late 1950s and 1960s, under Norodom Sihanouk, Kep became the seaside retreat of the Cambodian elite, and architects of the New Khmer Architecture movement, among them Vann Molyvann and Lu Ban Hap, built angular concrete villas with deep shading fins and terraces looking out to the gulf between 1953 and 1970. A resort life of hotels and a bathing promenade grew with them, and the crab boats supplied the kitchens.

The war ended it. After 1975 the Khmer Rouge emptied the town, and residents short of food and money stripped the villas of wood, wiring and fittings to trade across the border, leaving the shells to the vegetation; the area remained unsafe for years, with guerrillas in the hills nearby into the 1990s. Kep was still half-abandoned at the end of the century. Since the 2000s it has revived slowly and unevenly: the crab market rebuilt, the beach widened with sand from Sihanoukville, province status of its own in 2008, boutique hotels in some restored villas and new ones built alongside the ruins. It remains small, and that is much of its appeal.

Kep is a Cambodian holiday town first and a foreign destination second. On weekends and public holidays, families arrive from Phnom Penh and Kampot with mats and cool boxes, hire a hammock or a shaded platform, eat crab and grilled squid for hours and swim in their clothes as the afternoon cools. The rhythm of the place — slow, social, centred on food and shade — comes from that habit rather than from any resort industry.

The working culture is maritime. Crab is caught in traps set close inshore and kept alive in submerged baskets at the market until sold, and the boats, baskets and sorting tables are the town's daily theatre. Inland, families work salt pans and pepper gardens, crops with long histories here, and the pepper farmers speak of their soil and grades with real precision.

The ruins give the town its second identity. The stripped modernist villas are increasingly recognised as architectural heritage rather than simply wreckage, and some have been restored as hotels or homes while others sit in the trees with families living in and around them. Otherwise the customs are those of provincial Cambodia: Buddhist festivals mark the year, the pagodas are the social centre of the villages, elders are greeted first, and modest dress and quiet manners are expected away from the sand.

Kep is Cambodia's smallest and least populous province, about 336 km² with some 42,000 people, and the municipality of Kep counted close to 36,000 of them in 2019, strung along the coast road rather than gathered in a centre. There is no real downtown: a market, a few government offices, the pier, the beach and the seafood stalls, with villages and farmland immediately behind them.

Fishing sets the pattern. Crab traps are checked early and the catch reaches the market through the morning, while squid boats work at night and salt and pepper are harvested inland through the dry months. Tourism is the other income, supporting guesthouses, restaurants, boat operators and drivers, and it is strongly seasonal and heavily weighted to weekends. Many younger people work in Kampot, Sihanoukville or Phnom Penh and come home for festivals.

The day is shaped by heat and tide: activity early, a long quiet afternoon, and a second life from late afternoon when the promenade fills, the grills are lit and the light goes gold over the islands. Land prices along the shore have risen with new hotel development, and how much building the coast should take, along with waste, water supply and the future of the salt fields, are the local arguments. The crossing to Vietnam about 20 km east keeps a steady trade in goods and people moving through.

Crab is the town's whole reputation. The blue swimming crabs caught in the shallows off Kep are cooked within minutes of being lifted from their holding baskets, and the definitive dish is kdam chaa mrech Kampot — crab stir-fried with whole stems of fresh green Kampot pepper, the peppercorns still soft and eaten along with the meat. The pepper comes from farms a few kilometres inland, graded green, black, red and white and protected by a geographical indication, and it also flavours squid, prawns and beef.

The rest of the menu is coastal Khmer cooking. Whole fish and squid are grilled over charcoal on split bamboo and eaten with tuk meric, a dipping sauce of lime, salt and crushed black pepper. Amok trey, fish steamed in banana leaf with coconut milk, lemongrass and kroeung spice paste, is the national dish and common here; sour soups with tamarind, samlor korko thick with mixed vegetables and prahok, and beef lok lak appear everywhere. Breakfast is kuy teav noodle soup or bai sach chrouk, grilled pork with rice and pickles.

Around the food are the products of the country behind the town: sea salt from the pans towards Kampot, fish sauce and prahok made from the same waters, durian and mangosteen from inland orchards, and palm sugar. Fresh coconuts, sugar-cane juice and fruit shakes are the beach drinks, iced coffee with condensed milk the everyday one, and Cambodian beer the accompaniment to a long table of crab.