Chi Phat

Chi Phat is a beautiful village in the remote province of Koh Kong, near the Thai border in southwestern Cambodia. There is a dozen of foreigners sat down to a communal dinner of chicken curry and plenty of activities from fishing, bird-watching at sunrise, mountain biking across rocky streams, swimming in waterfalls to fending off rain forest leeches. Villages like Chi Phat had little contact with the outside world. A lack of infrastructure gives least-explored terrain and a region remained virtually forbidden to outsiders.

Unfortunately new roads now penetrate the jungle and scale the hills. New bridges traverse the area’s numerous rivers. And as Cambodia has achieved a level of political stability, a small but diverse array of Western-run accommodations featuring the makeshift restaurant in Chi Phat has opened in the last few years, catering to both backpackers and the well-heeled.

However thanks to this new accessibility travelers can now discovering the area’s biodiversity, which includes one of Southeast Asia’s largest tracts of virgin rain forest. The region of Koh Kong covers 4,300 square miles, but the charms of Cambodian rural life are readily apparent in Chi Phat, home to about 2,500 people. The village is nestled in the Southern Cardamom Mountains, up the mangrove- and bamboo-lined Preak Piphot River. Wooden houses on stilts, towering palms, children wearing navy blue and white uniforms hanging out on the backs of water buffalo in neon green rice fields.

Last year, Chi Phat welcomed 1,228 visitors, according to the alliance, an increase of nearly 50 percent from 2009. Residents are receiving much-needed income that allows them to reside year-round in the village, allowing their children to go to school and get to health care. On trips organized by the Community-Based Eco-tourism office, visitors can trek through fields filled with canary yellow and electric blue butterflies to reach bat caves hidden behind curved waterfalls, or plant a tree at a reforestation nursery. Recent visitors reportedly caught a glimpse of a few of the area’s roughly 175 endangered elephants.