Double Room by Rikitikitavi

Rikitikitavi offers a small, stylish range of individually decorated rooms situated in a tastefully renovated wooden framed rice barn that’s steeped in history.

Originally built during the 1920s at the height of colonial Indochina, the building served as a rice import and export depot when Kampot was still the country’s major port. As Cambodia entered her years of turmoil, the building became a Khmer Rouge theatre, with paintings of happy Khmers toiling in the fields adorning the walls. As the Vietnamese swept through the country in 1979 the building was used by their forces stationed here as a barracks. When building Rikitikitavi we came across many Vietnamese military artefacts, including several small buckets worth of bullets from excavating the new foundations for the restaurant. With stability restored to the land, the building became a lumber storage yard, a gym, and was then modernised to become the governor’s private residence. We began work on renovating the place into Rikitikitavi in 2005, and opened a year later.