Staying at the Tamok Guesthouse

As part of our Cambodian Dark Tourism Tour tour this year we stayed at the Tamok Guesthouse. Now for the uninitiated Ta Mok was one of the leading figures of the Khmer Rouge, even being its last leader. Now this obviously leads to the question, why name a hotel after him?

One might also ask why we would stay there too, but for us at least it was because our regular tour stop – The Heng Hotel, which is next to the grave of Pol Pot was closed that day. This meant we needed a place to stay, and the Tamok Guesthouse was that place.

What the Ta Mok?

A senior political leader within Angkar as well as the Khmer Rouge Ta Mok would later become the last leader of the Khmer Rouge in their rump state.

He was later arrested in 1999, which led to the last Khmer Rouge state falling and to some extent peace within Cambodia.

He later died in 2006, but with a very expensive funeral and seemingly a lot of love from the people of Anlong Veng. Yet despite this he was no wallflower and was indeed one of the most evil members of the Cercle Marxiste.

Famously he took part in an interview with Pol Pot, which you can see below where he quite literally laughs about whether tens of thousands, or indeed millions were killed by the regime.

The Tamok Guesthouse

With this information the name Tamok Guesthouse takes a bit of a funny turn, I mean you would not have the Himmler Hotel would you? But alas things are different in Anlong Veng and Cambodia.

The hotel though is not actually named “after” the former militant, but rather because it is located next to Ta Mok house, which is to an extents a dark tourist attraction.

The rooms though are OK, very cheap, have a great location and the owners are at least nice. It also has one other kinda draw to it and that is the bar next door, which is called Lilly Pizza and Night Pub. This is a restaurant, cocktail providing pub, as well as a gas station – really only in Cambodia.