Sakun's Kampot

A modern history of the Cambodian province of Kampot, told through the lives of the salt fields people of Chum Kriel.

Just outside of Kampot town is the district of Chum Kriel, which contains hundreds of salt fields, fringed with small, basic houses and rice paddies. This book tells the stories of some of the resilient, resourceful and courageous people who have made their lives there.

Based an both documentary research and individual interviews, Sakun's Kampot provides some answers to those who are curious about what the southernmost edge of Cambodia has been through during the last 200 years. Kampot province has been a land of bandits and pirates, insurrection and terrible brutality, pioneering agriculture and tribal enclaves, and colonialist endeavours and heroic resistance.

In particular, the book follows the extended family of Sakun Po through the twentieth century to the present, including the catastrophic 1970s, when civil war and the Khmer Rouge dominated the province.

Kampot is being drawn rapidly into the technological new millennium and this book seeks to ensure its rich past is not forgotten.