Set among gardens and fruit plantations, the Teuk Chhou Zoo is home to a wide range of fauna, including tigers, a pair of playful young elephants, lemurs and gibbons. The zoo is privately managed and spreads over a wide area, permeated by incongruous piped music. As in most zoos, the animals look none too happy, belying the almost unintelligible praises of the zoo’s founders on a board at the entrance. Just a couple of hundred metres further upstream from the zoo, the river becomes particularly scenic, racing down the valley and bubbling over the rocks in a series of gurgling rapids. There’s a fee ($1 per day) to go further, which gives you access to the rapids and car park, where you’ll find plenty of food stalls and places to hire inflated inner tubes. Paths lead down to the river, where you can paddle or, if you’re a good swimmer and the water isn’t in full spate, plunge in for a swim – but be careful at all times, as the current is deceptively strong and the water incredibly cold. The north bank of the river gets really busy at weekends and it’s worth paying 500 riel to cross the chain link bridge to the other side where you’ll find plenty of quieter bathing spots. You can reach the zoo and rapids in twenty minutes from Kampot by hiring a moto for a half-day ($4).