Kampong Cham, Cambodia — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Kampong Cham known for?

Kampong Cham sits on the central lowlands of the river, and since the division of 2013 the province is the part lying west of the water, with Tboung Khmum taking the land on the far bank. Its capital shares its name. Kampong Chhnang, Kampong Thom, Kratié, Prey Veng and Kandal complete the ring of neighbours.

Where is Kampong Cham?

The Mekong decides the shape of Kampong Cham. The province lies on the central lowlands of the river, and after the administrative division that took effect on 31 December 2013 its territory is the land west of the water, while everything east of it became Tboung Khmum. That single line redrew the province.

Before the split, Kampong Cham reached east as far as the international border with Vietnam and was the eleventh largest of Cambodia's provinces. Six neighbours surround what remains. Kampong Chhnang lies to the west, Kampong Thom and Kratié to the north, Tboung Khmum to the east across the river, and Prey Veng and Kandal to the south.

The province covers about four and a half thousand square kilometres. Its capital, also called Kampong Cham, stands on the Mekong and is the largest city inside the boundary, which keeps the province's centre of gravity on the water rather than inland. Lowland is the word for the ground.

Kampong Cham sits in the central lowlands rather than in hill country, and the tropical setting places it in the wet-and-dry belt of the northern hemisphere. The province dates from 1907. What changed in 2013 was its extent, not its existence, so the name is older than the shape it describes.

What is Kampong Cham like?

The river is the common thread. Kampong Cham is described by its position on the central lowlands of the Mekong, and since the division the river serves as the province's eastern boundary as well as its setting, with Tboung Khmum on the opposite bank. Two provinces share one history.

Anything recorded of Kampong Cham before 31 December 2013 belongs partly to the ground that became Tboung Khmum, since the two were one province until that date. Its name repeats at two scales. The capital and the province are both Kampong Cham, so the word does duty for a city on the Mekong and for the lowland ground around it, and usage separates them by context rather than by any second name.

The city is also the largest. That concentrates provincial life in one settlement, with the smaller places spread out toward Kampong Chhnang, Kratié and Prey Veng. Age sits with the name, not the borders.

Kampong Cham has existed as a province since 1907, which is long enough for the name to have outlasted the extent it once covered, since the province formerly reached east to the boundary with Vietnam. Kandal and Kampong Thom mark other limits. The tropical year, split between wet and dry, orders the calendar the same way on both banks of the Mekong.

What is the history of Kampong Cham?

Kampong Cham was constituted in 1907. For most of the century that followed it stretched east across the Mekong to the international border with Vietnam and ranked eleventh among Cambodia's provinces by area. That ended on 31 December 2013.

The division kept the land west of the river as Kampong Cham and made the land east of it into Tboung Khmum, leaving the province with the Mekong as an edge rather than a spine.

What is the climate of Kampong Cham?

The Mekong sets the frame. Kampong Cham lies on the central lowlands of the river in the tropics, so the year here arrives as a wet half and a dry half rather than as four seasons of shifting temperature. Temperature holds steady all year.

Water is what moves, and on lowland ground beside a river of this size the difference between the two halves of the year shows in the landscape before it shows on a thermometer.

How do you get to Kampong Cham?

The river bank is the address. Kampong Cham's capital stands on the Mekong and is the largest city in the province, so the province's approaches converge on it rather than on any other settlement inside the boundary. Six provinces adjoin it.

Kandal and Prey Veng approach from the south, Kampong Chhnang from the west, Kampong Thom and Kratié from the north, and Tboung Khmum lies directly across the water.