Top Five Bars in Cambodia

12th AUGUST 2016

Just a few days after I shuttered this blog, as I was in the midst of finalising my intended departure from China for good.... out of the blue I was offered quite an exciting new job, which kept me in China for another two-and-a-half years or so. At least it got me out of Beijing, moved me down to the Suzhou-Hangzhou-Shanghai area. I was completely burnt out on Beijing; but I was pretty much done on China too, and after having to endure another couple of years of the place, I was determined I had to leave and never come back.

During this rather fraught 'China extension', I had the good fortune to discover Cambodia for the first time. Well, I had long been interested in, fascinated by the country. And I had laid plans for an extended visit when I quit Beijing at the beginning of 2013 - but got deterred by the likely difficulty of travelling there around the time of the late King Sihanouk's funeral. In fact, I didn't manage to make my first trip there until Christmas 2014. I took to it at once, and returned twice more within the next few months..... and then relocated permanently to Phnom Penh towards the end of 2015.

By August 2016, after considerable travels around the country, I am in a position to add a little 'Best Bars in Cambodia' roundup to my old drinking blog here (sneakily backdated into my 'Farewell Tuesday').

Yes, it is a little sad that there are no Phnom Penh bars in this list. Perhaps I haven't researched my 'home turf' quite enough yet. I have in fact spent very nearly as much time 'on the road' visiting other parts of the country as I have 'at home' in PP. And I have for most of this past year been drinking only very moderately, or not at all - very different from my wild Beijing days of a few years ago! When I'm off 'on holiday', I let my hair down a little bit, sup a little more. While in PP, I spend much of my time hunkered down in my very pleasant apartment, and sometimes don't venture out from one week to the next. (Also, I worry that I may be something of a jinx: the two best beloved watering-holes of my early months here were both soon demised - one fatally losing its mojo after just a couple of months of near-perfect-bar-ness, and its replacement in my drinking affections being suddenly demolished a scant three months after that! This city, alas, suffers many of the same woes of hasty, greedy, ill-conceived 'development' as Beijing. I have caught it on the cusp of momentous changes, and I fear that everything I now love about it is likely to be swept away in the next few years.)

Moreover, the majority of Phnom Penh bars come up seriously lacking in one way or another. The city has an awful lot of bars, but most of them aren't really much good; and even the good ones are a long way short of great. (It's not quite so ill-served as Siem Reap, which is a very, very disappointing bar town; or the big coastal resort of Sihanoukville, which is the armpit of the world, surely the ugliest city in SE Asia... and has not a single decent bar.) There will probably be a 'Top Five Bars in Phnom Penh' post appearing shortly, but for now.... here's my pick of The Best from the rest of Cambodia.

The Top Five Bars in Cambodia

5)  Picasso (Siem Reap)

Picasso is a challenge to find: very inconspicuous signage, not open during the daytime, hidden down a tiny back-alley (but parallel to and just yards away from the raucous awfulness that is the city's main 'Pub Street'). And it's a terrible name for a bar, a name that cries "twee bistro food" rather than "hardcore dive bar". But the latter is what it is, and thank god for it. I think it used to be more of a tapas type of place in its early days, but it has gradually evolved into the city's best drinking den. It's the decor that makes it: an arched faux brick ceiling gives it the grungy intimacy of a cellar bar (although it's actually at ground level). And it has a long, stone-topped U-shaped bar, almost a complete 'island'; it's the only one of its kind I've found in the country, and it is quite magical how it conduces to opening up casual conversations with other drinkers - whether next to you, or on the opposite side of the narrow room.  The feisty young manager, an Aussie girl called Sam, also plays a big part in maintaining the friendly, chatty atmosphere of the place. Cheap drinks and a small but good offering of bar snacks - and an ongoing obsession with trying to set a new Jenga world record - complete its appeal. It's one of the most sociable bars in the country - and streets ahead of anything else in Siem Reap. Its all-evening 'happy hour' on Wednesdays is one of the country's great drinking events too, a rather dangerous attraction (it's not wise to schedule your bus out of Siem Reap on a Thursday!!).

4)  Indo Bar (Kampot)

Again, a pretty terrible name, but... this unassuming little spot, on a quiet street a block or two in from the river, has managed to recreate the ambience of a traditional British pub - the only place I know in the country to have pulled this off (having the cheery young Brit owner behind the bar most of the time certainly helps; but there are a lot of other foreign-owned bars around, especially in this town, that dismally fail to conjure any particular atmosphere or character). The TV behind the bar is fairly small, but it makes it a good spot for watching football matches (well, it's pretty much the only option in town for this). And they offer a small but very good (and very generously portioned) selection of Indian set meals from the nearby Curry House (I think there's some shared ownership between the bar and the restaurant). My only gripe is that the bar itself is tiny, and you usually have to arrive pretty early in the evening if you're going to stake a claim to one of the handful of barstools. (This is a common problem with the footprint of the typical 'Chinese shop-house' property - long and narrow. If I were turning one of these spaces into a pub, I'd put the bar along the side wall, not at the end of the room.)  [Well, damn - the jinx strikes again! I returned to Kampot just after writing this post, and discovered that Indo had closed down over the summer of 2016. Oh Neil's (see below), luckily, is still going strong. But Kampot becomes a much less compelling destination when its number of attractive boozers is reduced to ONE.]

3)  The Riverside Balcony (Battambang)

Does exactly what it says on the label! Not a terrible name, this time, though rather unimaginatively prosaic - but we're probably stuck with it now. I gather this place has been going for several years, was one of the first foreign bars to open in Battambang - but had got itself a bit of a bad reputation under the last owner. Since the end of 2015, it's been taken over by a young Scot and his Australian girlfriend, and they have completely revitalized it. It is a lovely, lovely space, a large covered terrace on the first floor of a traditional wooden stilt house, overlooking the small river in the bucolic southern fringes of Battambang. The only reason this doesn't make the top spot is that it's a bit too fancy: it feels more like a 'special occasion' kind of drinking destination, somewhere you'd go on a date rather than just for everyday tippling. The temptation to explore their interesting list of cocktails (and/or their very fine selection of single malt Scotches) threatens to make it a bit too expensive for a regular haunt, too. But there is no finer place in the whole country to slake the day's thirst while watching the dusk gently fall, and I make a point of dropping in at least once or twice whenever I'm passing through Battambang. (Their pizzas are also extremely good, and boast some unusual but very effective combinations of toppings.) I am amazed - and resentful! - that there is nothing like this, nothing remotely as good as this in the capital.

2)  Here Be Dragons (Battambang)

OK, this name is perhaps a bit too determinedly quirky, and it doesn't quite fit the traditional templates for bar-naming - but it works. It's actually a very apposite warning, given the hazards of repeated and prolonged drinking that beckon within: it is the 'Bermuda Triangle' of Battambang! On the quiet east bank of the river, just north of the Wat Sangke temple, Here Be Dragons is one of the country's most popular backpacker dorms. (My days of slumming it in ultra-cheap bunk beds are behind me; but, luckily, they have a few quite decent - and also very cheap - private rooms upstairs, so it has become my favoured place to stay in the city.) By some happy alchemy, the young Brit couple who own the place have managed to create such a welcoming atmosphere that many people who arrive anticipating just a couple of days' battery-recharging before they head on to Siem Reap or Phnom Penh or Thailand, end up.... staying rather longer.... sometimes indefinitely. Most of the bar staff are backpackers who couldn't bear to leave. That's how fabulous this bar is! And in addition to its lively - though mostly transient (and mostly very, very young) - population of guests, it's also established itself as the major social hub for much of the expat community there. It tops Picasso [above] as a sociable bar because it's super-lively almost every night of the week (not just Wednesdays) and you're likely to meet a broad mix of people, many of them long-term residents in the city (not just tourists). The food is - mostly - very good, and the menu's extremely varied; the prices are pretty cheap; and they put on a slew of special events (cheap cocktails all night every Friday, themed parties or live music events most Saturdays, the best trivia quiz in the country on Wednesdays). Ah yes, and they don't really close. Nominally, they do, at about 12.30. But the barmen usually like to have a few to unwind themselves after that; and if the owner's in, he'll often settle in for an all-night session. This is the only place in the country where I have found myself repeating my crazy Beijing lifestyle, staying up drinking until 2am or 3am for days in succession (I fear I don't have the stamina to do that at all regularly any more; but it is nice to be able to revisit that over-indulgence just once in a while). The only slight demerit (there's always one!) is that, owing, I believe, to some cock-up in Imperial-to-Metric conversion, the bar is absurdly too high; and the rickety rattan stools you are obliged to perch on if you want to be able to lean your elbows on it are ridiculously uncomfortable. I hope that one day they'll make enough money to rip it out, and replace it with one about 8" or 10" lower. It might then become the perfect bar.....

But for now, I give the coveted top spot to.......

1)  Oh Neil's (Kampot)

Yep, yet another terrible name - but a wonderful, wonderful bar. There are many other bars on the Kampot riverfront offering views of the often spectacular sunsets beyond the Elephant Hills on the far side of the river, but this is by far my favourite. The ambience is more thatched-roof tiki bar than Irish boozer, but in a tropical climate, this seems to work; in fact, this place seems to combine the best of Irish and Caribbean culture (as my favourite bar back in Oxford 25 years ago briefly did). Actually, the Irishness is confined to a few Irish whiskeys behind the bar, and a few Irish items on the menu (I was delighted to find colcannon here - for the first time in years! - but disappointed that the Irish stew, though heartily thick, is made with beef rather than mutton). The general feel of the place is more American, with background music - played at sensibly audible-but-not-obtrusive volumes - sourced from online radio stations specialising in blues and classic rock. Owner Neil seems a nice guy, and is usually on hand himself - in the evenings, at least - to make sure all is running smoothly; although there's never too much of a worry about that, as he has managed to find himself some unusually friendly and efficient Cambodian bar staff. And, unlike nearby Indo [above, in the No. 4 spot], the bar is along the side wall, affording plenty of barstool perches (even so, the place is so popular that it can be difficult to get a seat). Excellent food, excellent service, excellent music, keen prices, and a super view from the small outdoor seating area at the front - this is dangerously close to 'bar perfection'. The fly-in-the-ointment here is the clientele: mostly quite middle-aged, nearly all expat rather than tourist - not nearly as varied as in most of the other venues on this list. Moreover, Kampot expats can seem tiresomely smug and self-satisfied: they're often rather too pleased with themselves that they were able to retire early and set up a moderately successful business there, or just that they were among the first to 'discover' that Kampot was the coolest spot in the entire country. I've had a number of interesting conversations at Oh Neil's, but on the whole I prefer the company (largely NGO workers) at Here Be Dragons; it's a very tight call between those two, for me. Oh Neil's just edges it on the food... and the music... and the hint of Irishness (I'm such a Plastic Paddy!).