Top Five Dive Bars in Cambodia (my new favourite hangouts)

15th NOVEMBER 2017

A little over a year on from my first post about my new life in Cambodia, I find - alas! - that all the bars I celebrated in that are now closed, or.... well, considerably diminished in my regard for them.

Indo Bar, a beguilingly English-pub-like little spot in the southern town of Kampot, may in fact have closed even before I put that post up; I discovered its recent demise on my next visit down there just a few weeks later (I was even more disappointed that its sister enterprise, the Curry House, had likewise closed, leaving the town without any really decent Indian food).

Picasso in Siem Reap I've been going off as well. Vivacious Aussie bar manager Sam was one of its main points of appeal, and she's moved on now. The cocktails there were never much good, really, although brutally effective; but now, alas, they seem to be tainted by the tide of fake booze that has broken over the city in the last year or two: the last few times I've drunk the spirits there, it's made me ill.... and there's only one thing that causes that, I'm afraid. Also, I've had a run of bad experiences with obnoxious punters there recently. So, it's dropped off my 'must visit' list, although I've been spending more and more time in Siem Reap this year. I still like its ambience, and the sociability of the place, but - there's not much that I actually want to drink there.

I have a similar problem with Here Be Dragons in Battambang, where I now live (the city, that is, not the bar!). It's still a very inviting little bar, but.... well, draft beer is almost never any good in this country (and I'm convinced they've switched over from the sort-of-OK Cambodia to the gassy pish of Anchor; that might be a false memory, but it contributes forcefully to my rising disenchantment with the place), so I used to drink mostly Beer Lao there - of which they had, for a time, both the stout and regular strong lager varieties, and their new premium offering, Beer Lao Gold, with its stimulating burst of hoppiness on the nose. There have been some problems with the distributor for these Lao brands, though, and I think they now only have the lager.... perhaps not even that. And no decent local beer either (no Cambodia in cans - why not??). And their novelty cocktails are invariably way too sweet for my taste. So, there's absolutely nothing for me to drink there any more..... um, except spirits, I suppose. In this less attractive drink environment, I find myself more and more pissed off by their too-high bar and uncomfortable, wonky bar stools - things which had previously been only mild irritations to me. I confess also that I'd had a major man-crush on Dave Howard, the brilliant young manager they had last year (my farewell binge with him in Phnom Penh just before he flew back to England was probably the most extreme session I've had in this country!). I like their new staff well enough, but there's just not the magic there was last year. (Also, of course, when I was just a visitor in this town, I always used to stay at The Dragons; so, it was by default my first and last stop every day. Now that it's no longer 'home' - nor even, most of the time, 'on the way home' - I don't have much incentive to drop in there.)

And worst of all, Battambang's richest gem, the Riverside Balcony Bar - the loveliest venue in the whole country, though just a little bit too 'fancy' to be an habitual three-times-a-week type of haunt - has just been forced to close (and while I was out of town, dammit, at the end of October). The owner of the property had died suddenly a few months ago; so, there's probably now some sort of family dispute over what to do with the property (redevelop it, sell it, reclaim it as a family home, tout it as a commercial space again - but at a much higher rent??), and perhaps even some uncertainty as to who the new owner actually is. I had thought Frazer and Frankie, the charming young couple who've made this place into such a beloved institution in the town over the past two years, had another year on their lease; but it seems not. They'd got a bit bored with the place, and were looking to move on anyway. But they had been hoping to get an extension for at least one more year, so that they could sell the bar as a going concern; and that hasn't worked out - so, the place is suddenly derelict. Unbearably sad.

At least dear old Oh Neil's (also in Kampot) is still there, and still as great as it ever was.... although it's gone through some rough patches in the last year or so (being without a kitchen for long periods, and giving up on daytime opening - factors which combined to rob us of Neil's 'breakfast roll', one of my very favourite guilty indulgences: an entire cooked breakfast somehow crammed inside a baguette!), and I gather it is unlikely to survive beyond the end of its current lease.

So, where have I been drinking over this last year or so, as these early favourites faltered and fell?? These are my newer loves - all of them predictably divey!

Froog's New Top Five Favourite Bars in Cambodia

5)  The Roadhouse Saloon (Siem Reap)
Or 'Anna's Place', as I like to think of it. The likeable Khmer landlady is coy as to how this bar came about, where the concept came from. It is such an authentic rendition of a classic American bar (subdued lighting, stone-topped bar, classic advertisements and b&w photos of dead rock stars on the walls) that I am inclined to think that there must have been a foreign partner involved at some point; but she won't be drawn on that, and appears to be in sole charge now. Her house special gin & tonic (a huge measure, with lots of lime juice, served in a brandy balloon) has become my favourite brain-bludgeoner this past year. Again, alas, as with so many of my original picks above, there's not much on offer in the way of beers - which stops this place being more than an occasional indulgence for me. Its other major drawbacks are irregular opening and a complete dearth of customers most of the time. While I have much enjoyed being able to introduce a couple of visiting friends to its charms in recent months, it has been completely deserted just about every other time I've looked in - which hasn't tempted me to stay. Perhaps I've just been unlucky; Anna assures me she's had a number of spectacular nights where large gaggles of visitors kept her up until the wee small hours. This, it seems, is her common excuse for not always opening very early, or at all - she's recovering from one of her big nights (exhausted? hungover? feeling that she's made her money for the week??). With a better clientele (it's got good potential, I think, as it enjoys a very prominent location - on the big roundabout at the start of 7 Makara Street, directly opposite the horrendous Hard Rock Café), and a more varied range of drinks, this could become my favourite bar in the country.... or at the northern end of it, anyway.

4)  Mekong Crossing  (Kampong Cham)
The Mekong Crossing is a barebones little guesthouse that I've often stayed at (well, two out of three times so far) in the quaint provincial capital of Kampong Cham. It's got a great corner location, right opposite the riverfront promenade, with some nice sidewalk seating (and also a narrow wraparound balcony on the first floor, which is scarcely used), and some of the keenest drinks prices I've found anywhere in the country. The food, unfortunately, is not up to much (I prefer the nearby Moon River for that). But they have a really friendly group of staff in there; and I've developed a huge affection for the place in just a few brief visits. (Indeed, Kampong Cham is rapidly becoming my favourite place in the country - largely because it has just about zero foreigners [only a handful of Western tourists at any given time, and it's fairly easy to ignore them; no resident expats that I've ever seen!]. Sometimes, I just get really fed up of the kind of Westerner that predominates here; and KC - just a few hours out of Phnom Penh on a bus - is an excellent place to get away from them.)

3)  Kampot Hilton  (Kampot)
I don't love the name: the reminiscence with the 'Hanoi Hilton' doesn't conjure positive associations (nor, indeed, does any reminder of the ghastly Paris Hilton); I fear the Hilton Hotel chain might sue one day; and, well, it somehow just doesn't sound like a bar to me. But a bar it is, and a very good one. A very new one, too: only open two or three months at this point, I believe. It was always an appealing space, and a promising location (facing the small grassy square just inland from the 'Old Market' on the riverfront); but with its previous incarnation, a would-be New-Orleans-y bar called NOLA... well, that had its moments, but the tenant had got depressed by some bad experiences in her business and personal life, and had rather obviously given up interest in the venture.... It was slowly and painfully dying on its feet over the last year or two. Its revamp - under a boisterous Aussie biker couple, Jono and Ricky - is long overdue, and seems likely to prosper. The newcomers are putting a lot of effort into special events, including some kind of promotion involving cheap drinks or prize draws every night of the week (and putting on a rather awesome brunch buffet for Melbourne Cup Day while I was visiting recently). The major draw, though, is Ricky's pub grub, which is really very impressive (she apparently dumps a full Bloody Mary into every serving of her excellent chilli - which is an inspired innovation, to be sure, although I worry what it does to her profit margin!!). I was in there very nearly every night of a recent two-week stay: it's not often that happens with me.

2)  Elly's  (Phnom Penh)
Just before I grew terminally disenchanted with Phnom Penh and quit at the beginning of this year, I had found myself becoming a bit of a regular at this newly opened bar down in the Russian Market district, at the far southern end of the city (I'd only go once or twice a week; but, given that it's nearly five miles away from where I lived, and I'd usually walk the whole way, there and back, it must have had quite a draw for me...!). It's a classic dive: dark, narrow, barebones, grungy.... cheap. But that's obviously a winning formula for many folks, not just me: this is the only bar I've found in the capital that has established an enthusiastic regular clientele (on Fridays, in particular, it would get pretty heaved out by shortly after 6pm). At first, it was a very Aussie bar (the owner appeared to be an amiable young bloke called Clinton, getting occasional help from his old dad, Don), and that was no bad thing: they do the dive bar well, the Aussies. But when Clinton moved on to richer pastures overseas (and Don also vanished back to Oz for quite a while) at the start of this year, the mysterious Elly - for whom the place had been named all along - stepped forward to take over (Don's Mrs, apparently: a feisty Filipina). The bar food menu (already good under Clinton, who had experience as a chef) underwent a dramatic makeover, going fully Filipino (there are a few other places in PP where you can sample this cuisine; but I doubt if they're anywhere near as good as this!): the occasional all-you-can-eat Pinoy Sunday brunches are particularly good (I'd often find myself the only white guy in the room, as the place had soon become a hub for the city's entire Filipino community during the daytime on the weekends - that's how good the food is!). There are, as ever, quite a few negative points: some of the 'regulars' are a bit obnoxious, all of them smoke an obscene amount, the music they play in there can be sometimes great but rather more often absolutely bloody terrible (I was unlucky enough to catch them on a Cambodian holiday the last time I visited: the usual 6pm crowd had been in all afternoon, chain-smoking, and getting especially obnoxious; they launched into a phase of cueing up electronic dance music on Youtube ['young' people - dontcha hate 'em??!!], which drove me from the bar in despair within minutes), and so on. Ah yes, and the place is romantically disastered for me: I had a brief but ultimately very unhappy affair with a gorgeous American woman I met in there just before Christmas last year. Yet still, despite all that, I am sure to go back there whenever I visit Phnom Penh....

And in the top spot this time, my new 'second home'.....

1)  Ganesha  (Battambang)

This charming little family-run guesthouse operates out of a couple of colonial-era shophouses in the heart of the old quarter of central Battambang. The German owner is a bombastic but mostly lovable old eccentric (German food features heavily on the menu; and the potato dishes - wedges, potato cakes, mash - are the best you'll find anywhere in the country), and his lovely Cambodian wife is my favourite person in the city, one of the nicest people I've met anywhere. The staff are great, too. The booze prices are very keen, and there's a better range of beers available than anywhere else in town: drinkable Cambodia on draft, Klang in cans (tastes about as nondescript as any other Asian lager, but it's a satisfying 1% stronger - hence, my tipple of choice!), and also the handle-with-care Barrley Black (a new super-strong 'stout' from the Cambodia beer people: there's nothing at all nice about it, and it induces hangovers-from-hell, but... it's 8.5% alcohol for only a dollar a can!!). They have a pretty good pool table too (and the owner and his two teenage kids are formidable players), which is, of course, a further insidious attraction for me. They've recently instituted a pool competition on Monday nights, which could become a fixture in my week (except that my mojo has gone walkabout this month; I'm now losing confidence that I'll even be able to give anyone a half-decent game, let alone win the damn tournament outright, before I head off on the road again in a few weeks). Nothing is perfect in this world: the bar is tiny (and often overrun with backpackers staying in the dorms upstairs), the only three stools available are uncomfortably tall,.... and they can't hook up the TV sound to play the commentary during big football games (aaarrgghh!). But despite these considerable demerits, Ganesha has wormed its way deep into my heart. If I'm going out drinking in Battambang (although I have given up for several extended periods since I moved here....), it's highly likely that this will be my main stop.... quite probably my only one.

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!).