mid-20th-century villas

From Kep's northern roundabout, NH33A heads north past the mildewed shells of handsome mid-20th-century villas that speak of happier, carefree times - and of the truly terribly Khmer Rouge years. Built according to the precepts of the modernist style, with clean lines, lots of horizontals and little adornment, they once played host to glittering jet-set parties and may do so again someday, though for the time being many shelter squatters (and, some say, ghosts).

Don't even think of buying one - they were all snapped up for a song in the mid-1990s by speculators well-connected in Cambodia's murky corridors of military and civilian power.