Kampot sää — maaliskuu

March is inside Phu Quoc's dry high season - November to March on the strict reckoning, stretching to May on the generous one - and regulars call it a safe month: hot, sunny, blue sky, calm water. Our row gives 32.3C reading as 37C with a 29.4C sea. The island-specific advice is about which coast. The west is fine in March but is the side that turns rough and murky when the wind gets up or the wet season arrives; the east is more sheltered, and Khem Beach in its bay is the one they name for reliably clear, calm water. Our row still counts 14.7 precipitation days carrying only 50.7mm, which is the brief tropical shower rather than a wet month. The record: 24.2C nights, 11 hours of sun and a 21 kph wind.

Kampot's forum, including a poster with multiple years of July/August visits, describes a consistent pattern: rain on roughly three of every four days, but concentrated as an intense downpour for an hour or two in the late afternoon or overnight, leaving mornings and early afternoons generally clear for getting out and about. One visitor did hit a genuinely wetter-than-usual stretch in late July, but the forum consensus was that these short, sharp squalls are normal for the season and not a reason to skip Kampot or nearby Kep.

Forum posters name December-January as the best weather stretch of the year here - dry, cool mornings, blue skies and a light breeze, with humidity noticeably lower than the rest of the year. The clear trade-off: this is also peak tourist season, so posters note higher prices and more crowds than the shoulder months. For Kampot specifically, posters describe November-December as particularly gorgeous - dry and comfortably low-humidity, though occasionally dusty given the dry conditions. Posters do flag that 'cool' is relative here - what feels cool to a Cambodian local wearing a light jacket may still feel warm to a visitor from a genuinely cold climate, so temperature expectations should be calibrated accordingly.