Kep Sur Mer (Kep by the sea), a tiny seaside town near Kampot, is one Cambodian hamlet
that is only gradually finding its feet after years
of war.
The seaside family home of Om Rasadei under renovation
The evidence of a destructive past is found down almost any street in Kep, where
the skeletons of holiday villas sit idly while being quietly consumed by the jungle.
Dozens of the once plush homes in various states of decay are sprinkled around the
seaside village.
"It's a kind of ruin," says Om Rasadei of present day Kep.
Rasadei is now a political advisor to Prince Norodom Ranariddh but, as a child of
the Phnom Penh elite, he used to vacation in Kep in the 1960s, the period many still
consider was Cambodia's 'golden age'.
Today the abandoned homes give the whole town an eerie feeling of having been just
recently deserted. Some homes are structurally intact, others are clearly more in
need of resurrection rather than renovation. Elsewhere there are once-stately villas
whose only legacy is a lingering high fence, wrought iron gates and an overgrown
plot of land.
Not every house is empty. A few of the homes have been supplemented with makeshift
roofs and windows and are now homes to 'security guards', families paid by home owners
to keep squatters out. Kep's abandoned villas are so ubiquitous in the town that
they are even being used as the local Funcinpec and Sam Rainsy Party headquarters.
In the 1950s and '60s, flush with a peacefully achieved independence, Phnom Penh's
confident and wealthy elite appropriated Kep, the colonial retreat founded by the
French in 1908.
Known as the 'Cambodian Riviera', the town had its own casino and was frequented
by parties of diplomats and well-heeled Cambodian society eager for a swim, a sail
or a stroll on the beach. Wealthy Phnom Penhois built homes in confident modernist
styles with expansive ocean views.
Rasadei recalls his final visit to Kep before it, like much of the rest of the country,
was consumed by war. The son of the director of National Security, his family kept
a large house on the oceanfront.
"Before the war in 1967 or 1968 my father sent me to Kep with some friends to
prepare for my exams." The friends took their motorbikes on the train to Kampot
and spent their time studying, swimming and playing guitars, he says.
"I remember the car contests that were organized by the King for sports cars,
with ladies inside the car, usually wives of ministers or actresses, but it also
had the mountains, the sea, good air and good food.
"Kep during the sixties was like a kind of a Cote d' Azur. It was frequented
by rich people and high ranking people of the Kingdom, even the King and the Queen
Mother," Rasadei says.
In its heyday then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk not only kept his own villa, but his own
island as well. Ile des Ambassadeurs was a favorite spot for Sihanouk to entertain
a regular stream of guests.
The King's home is no longer occupied by squatters. The local police asked them to
move along two years ago and then took over a front room of the house as their own
headquarters.
It has clearly seen better days. Trees, Ta Prohm like, have taken root and destroyed
the high fence, bullet holes ring what was once the front door and all the homes'
fittings, from the ceiling lights to the floor tiles, have been scavenged.
Over the years the house, in which Sihanouk became head of state in 1960, has been
looted and abandoned and served as a barracks for the local militia before the squatters
finally moved in.
The fate of the Royal household was like the fate of Kep's other luxury properties.
With the Lon Nol coup Kep became a ghost town, abandoned by holiday makers and sometimes
swamped by the war raging in nearby Vietnam. Around 1970 Vietnamese soldiers entered
Kep and are said to have eaten all of the animals in the zoo.
That was positively civilized behavior compared to the actions of Cambodia's own
revolutionaries a few years later.
The Khmer Rouge took Kep in 1975 and set about destroying its symbols of bourgeois
culture, attacking the already abandoned holiday homes of Cambodia's elite. They
also set about destroying any remnants of the bourgeoisie in Kep by herding all the
local French speakers to a petrol station and setting it and them on fire.
An overgrown abandoned villa at Kep looks almost like a relic from an ancient Khmer era.
When the Vietnamese arrived in 1979 the houses again suffered with locals stripping
what was left for building materials to sell to the Vietnamese. The town itself continued
to live in fear with the Khmer Rouge shifting just seven kilometers away.
Roy Win, Kep's Red Cross chief, owns one of the few villas that is on the market.
It's a house with an interesting history.
During the early '90s Khmer Rouge commander Chhouk Rin, most well known for his alleged
involvement in the 1994 murder of three backpackers, was holed up in the colonial
villa and using it as the headquarters forhis Kampot province stronghold.
"I bought the house from Chhouk Rin in 1992," says Win of her beachside
villa.
It must have been a good time to sell for Rin, who was given a new property by the
government when he defected in 1994.
Win becomes nervous when asked about the villa's infamous owner, preferring to stick
to sales talk.
The dilapidated two storey house is one of the largest in town and one of the few
colonial era properties. Surrounded by palm trees and with absolute beach front Win
thinks the house is a steal for anyone with a mind to restore its former glory.
"I paid 300 damleung of gold, but I will sell the house for $150,000,"
she says.
Win says she pays a local police official 30,000 riel each month to look after the
property.
The house, she says, is free of both ghosts and squatters and, while it may be run
down, the building is still safe and sound.
"That is the structure of the French," says Win.
New Funcinpec Governor of Kep, Sim Son says that at least some of the houses are
structurally sound enough for restoration but others will need to be pulled down.
Son says that he hopes to see homes restored but at the moment water and electricity
are higher priorities.
"My primary idea is to turn Kep into a tourist destination but first we need
a master plan, we'll have to think about how to do it and seek input from infrastructure
experts."
Without infrastructure the town remains a long way from its former glory. Rasadei's
family home is the only one in town that is being brought back to life.
"At the time [of my 1968 visit] I didn't know I would not return for more than
twenty years. One or two years later it was the beginning of the Lon Nol war and
my parents sent me to France."
"I returned in 1992, just before the Untac election and, when I came back and
saw the place it was a real shock. Phnom Penh was a shock but in Kep the city had
just become a ruin," he says.
"The natural beauty is still there so I hope that one day there will be the
political will to remake the city as it was before."
Contact PhnomPenh Post for full article
SR Digital Media Co., Ltd.'#41, Street 228, Sangkat Boeung Raing, Khan Daun Penh, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Tel: +855 92 555 741
Email: [email protected]
Copyright © All rights reserved, The Phnom Penh Post