I live most of the year in Cambodia and like to visit Kampot. My family often ask me to go to La Plantation to buy them the Black Salt Pepper. I enjoy riding my motorcycle out to La Plantation and find the service awesome and the atmosphere is fun. I’ll keep coming back and highly recommend this place.

It was interesting to see the farm, and I enjoyed the drive over in Tuk Tuk. Perhaps due to the time of year, the farm was a bit touristy and crowded. Our group was too large to really be able to enjoy the tasting they have after the tour. I did find a couple of pepper mixes I liked though.

Of all the places I’ve visited in Cambodia, this is probably where I learned the most and really found inspiration in how they run their development venture. I refer to this latter point because this is a place where they go out of their way to treat their workers with respect, dignity, and with a family like sensibility. Though they don’t overemphasize it, their workers are housed in decent living quarters on-site at no cost. While I’d been to other spice farms around the world, the way this place is structured is quite different. Our guide, Leap (“Lee-epp”) took the time to describe in detail how and why each step of the process works. During the tasting session, she gave incredibly detailed descriptions of how each spice mix and sauce can be paired with variety of dishes. By that point, everyone must’ve been incredibly hungry because her she was quite vivid. But no worry, the restaurant didn’t disappoint. With a simple menu of traditional Khmer specialties, they really know how to season food in a way that you won’t find at Kampot restaurants. Even though I actually landed up buying quite a few spices, if the packaging was more durable I would have purchased even more since they have numerous unique products that you won’t find anywhere else in the country. Little vacuum packed bags that can’t be closed back up doesn’t really make sense for delicate spices. Some simple glass jars with solid tops would make a world of difference! My only regret was taking a tuktuk there. Because the road is being paved, there was a huge dust bowl throughout. Though the driver gave me a mask, I could feel the grit on my hair and face by the end of the trip. Probably would’ve been better to simply rent a car for the day, however the kind lady at the shop in town reassured me that I tuktuk would be fine.