While searching a place to sleep in the town with funny name Kampot (funny as in Russian language it’s name of a drink from fruits), we bumped into this abandoned guest house and laugh happily as it was exactly the place we were searching for!
Position
The Tiki Guesthouse is located near the bridge that leads to the famous Bokor National Park, go down it and here you are. No fences, just high grown grass that impedes the movement and lots of trash, that’s all what you will need to overcome to enter inside.
History
We’ve gathered history from some tuk-tuk drivers who told us that this place was opened 5 years ago. The land belonged to Cambodians who rent it to four French guys who run here a Guesthouse.
“It was a punk guesthouse, held by four french. We had concerts here every Thursday. The atmosphere of the bar was explosive. People could express themselves as much as they like on the walls around, so all graffitis inside Guesthouse are made by them”, told us one of the ex-owners of this place.
Then in January, 2018 the landowner sold the land to Chinese and French guys were asked to go away.
On 31 January they had here a great farewell party after which the house was shut down.
We have found a Facebook group of this guesthouse. After the closure some people, ex-visitors of this place, write tones of sad comments of how they regret that this happened. They describe this Guesthouse as a really wonderful place, a piece of France inside Cambodia, and that they really miss it.
Inside
We get inside this place and immediately fell in love with it! It is so beautiful! You can see that owners of this place put all their soul inside it.
Beautiful graffitis took us a while to explore them. Peaceful tree, scary pirates, funny comics it all says that this place was made with a good taste.
We have found lots of stuff that proves that this place in the past was a guest house. Old guidebook around Cambodia and South-Eastern Asia, keys, cheques, empty bottles of alcohol (as reviews say this place was famous for its parties).
Inside the house you can’t find nothing nowadays, just some full trash bins and that’s all. Though! The lockers are still working, so you can stay inside and lock the room so no one will be able to get in! This moment was perfect for us as we decided to stay there and didn’t want to be bothered by police again.
While exploration we see an old man who takes photos from a distance and seems afraid to get inside. We wave to him and invite to join us.
-Are you also an urbex?
-It’s my first time, he answers to us and we congratulate him with this, telling also about other abandoned places as Villa Thomas in Kep.
He is French and he is able to translate some writings that are made here. He said us that overall graffitis here have a peaceful meaning. But he mentions that some, probably written not so far ago, are really racists.
As we understood later guys when leaving left lots of graffitis on the walls, where they criticize Chinese population.
Anyway, sleeping at the Tiki Guesthouse was really comfortable and we enjoyed that place.
Pank is not dead! Guys, your Guesthouse is still alive!
