However, the small town of Kampot, on the Preaek Tuek Chhu river a few miles from the southern coast, was a lovely little place. The old centre is filled with slightly decaying French colonial buildings that are reminiscent of those in Hoi An, albeit in a greater state of disrepair. There are quite a number of bars and restaurants catering for tourists here, but in the main they are low key, and here there’s a distinct sense that this is still very much a living, working Cambodian town. There’s a wonderfully relaxed vibe about the place too, possibly due to the lack of cars and mild, cool climate at this time of year. We enjoyed a few hours wandering around the streets, soaking up the atmosphere as the sunlight turned golden, then made our way to a lovely bistro for a fabulous evening. Alas though, the town also has a bleaker side. In the past few years there’s been a sharp rise in sex tourism here and we saw many groups of generally 3 or 4 older men, loitering in bars, waiting around for the evening scene to get going. It’s easy to pick-up the working girls that live in the more squalid side streets, in dire conditions and often with several kids in tow. We happened upon a few of these streets in our wanderings and were dismayed at the sight. We also met an eccentric expat Frenchman from Limoges in his photography shop, stocked with more live cats than pictures, who’d been in South East Asia for an age. He was bemoaning his fate, tied to a shop that was hassled for money by the police and now in a town that, in his opinion, was going to the dogs. He claimed that a lot of old men in the town had gone past the sex tourist stage and were now permanent residents, retirees with lines of credit at the local whore houses. Depressing indeed. Our little guesthouse had notices everywhere warning that people engaging with the trade would face instant eviction.