Cambodia
Kampong Cham
Kampong Cham: A Mekong River Town and the Temple of Wat Nokor
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Good to know
Where Ships Stop
River ships stop at Kampong Cham on the Mekong, about 124 km northeast of Phnom Penh; your cruise line will tell you where your ship moors. The town center is small and easy to walk, and most of the sights lie a short ride outside it.
- Kampong Cham is the capital of the province of the same name and had about 61,750 people in 2021.
- The Kizuna Bridge carries the road across the Mekong from the town to the east bank.
- Cambodia's currency is the riel, but small US dollar notes are widely accepted.
- Cambodia is still heavily affected by landmines and unexploded weapons, and mined areas are often unmarked. Around rural temple sites, keep to the main paths and never pick up metal objects.
Kampong Cham on Your Own
The center of Kampong Cham is easy to walk, with restaurants along the riverfront and the central market a few streets back. For one short ride, take a motorbike taxi out to Wat Nokor, about 2 km from the center.
- Riverfront and market: Restaurants line the riverfront, and the central market, Psar Thom, sells fruit, fish and everything in between. Its food stalls open in daylight.
- Wat Nokor: The ancient temple was built of sandstone and laterite at the end of King Jayavarman VII's reign, and a modern temple has been built over and around it. An old inscription in the central pavilion is open to visitors.
- Phnom Pros and Phnom Srei: About 7 km west of town on the road to Phnom Penh, two low hills carry temples on their summits. Monkeys roam the top of Phnom Pros, and Phnom Srei has 308 steps to the summit.
- Getting around: Motorbike taxis wait in town, along with a few tuk-tuks. Agree on the fare before you set off.
- Getting back on time: All-aboard is usually about 30 minutes before sailing, and your ship posts the exact time. A ship will not wait for passengers touring on their own.
- Keep to the paths: At the temples and on the hills, stay on the main paths because of the landmine risk.
Culture and Local Life
Almost everyone in the province is Buddhist, but the town's name recalls the Cham, a mostly Muslim minority whose ancestors founded the kingdom of Champa in what is now Vietnam. Wat Nokor shows two eras of Cambodian religious building on a single site.
- More than 97 percent of the province's people are Buddhist and about 2 percent are Muslim, most of them Cham.
- The Cham speak their own language, Cham, from the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian languages. Cham tradition keeps a matriarchal pattern in family life and inheritance.
- At Wat Nokor, a more modern temple of a very different style has been built over and around the Angkor-era structure, so the two sit side by side.
- A local legend says the temple was built by a king who had unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, as an act of penance.
- Children and teenagers cared for by a local Buddhist charity based at Wat Nokor sometimes perform traditional Apsara dance there, mostly on weekends and holidays.
- Fresh sugar cane juice, pressed on the street, is sold on corners all over the center.
History
Kampong Cham sits on a stretch of the Mekong where Khmer and Cham history meet. An Angkor-era temple stands just outside town, the Khmer Rouge years left mass graves in the countryside, and since 2001 a bridge has joined the town to the far bank.
- The name: Kampong means port, so Kampong Cham is the port of the Cham, who settled along the Mekong after the fall of Champa. Old inscriptions show that Khmer and Cham royal families married into each other in this area.
- Rivals: In 1177 a Cham force sacked the Khmer capital at Angkor. In 1181 the Khmer king Jayavarman VII defeated them.
- Wat Nokor: The temple dates from the last years of Jayavarman VII's reign and is thought to have served as his headquarters for a time. It is the largest ancient temple complex in the province.
- The Khmer Rouge years: The Cham were among the groups targeted in the Cambodian genocide of 1975 to 1979. Between the hills of Phnom Pros and Phnom Srei is one of the killing fields where the Khmer Rouge left the bodies of their victims.
- The first Mekong bridge: The Kizuna Bridge opened in 2001, paid for by a grant of 56 million US dollars from the Japanese government. At 1,500 meters it linked eastern and western Cambodia by road for the first time, and an estimated 10,000 people crowded onto it for the opening.
- A province divided: On December 31, 2013, the land east of the Mekong was split off as the new province of Tbong Khmum.
- World Heritage hopes: Wat Nokor was added to Cambodia's tentative list for World Heritage status in 1992; the government withdrew it in 2022.
Kampong Cham with Children
Kampong Cham works for a family day if you keep it short and mostly outdoors: the riverfront, the monkeys on Phnom Pros and the steps of Phnom Srei. Some buildings at Wat Nokor hold bones from the Khmer Rouge years, and the killing field between the two hills, where bones are piled in a shed, is not a place for young children.
- Younger children: Walk the riverfront, watch the sugar cane presses at work and try a glass of the juice, and look out across the river to the long Kizuna Bridge.
- School age: On Phnom Pros, monkeys steal bananas from the vendors' tables, so keep snacks out of sight. The summit has a group of temples to explore.
- Teenagers: Climb the 308 steps of Phnom Srei to the ruined temple on top, and at Wat Nokor look for where the new pagoda meets the old Angkor-era stone.
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