A few streets back from the riverfront, Kampong Cham preserves one of the best surviving grids of French colonial shophouses in Cambodia. The two- and three-storey buildings, painted yellow and pale blue and roofed with red tiles, were put up in the early 20th century when the city was a French rubber-plantation administration centre. Several have shuttered second-floor balconies, ornamented stucco mouldings, and overhead arcaded walkways that shade the pavements below.
Many of the shophouses are still in everyday use as barbershops, motor-repair garages, noodle joints and small electrical-goods stores. The grid is small enough to be walked in an hour and gives a quieter, slower picture of provincial Cambodia than the riverfront or the markets.