We take to the water in Siem Reap, home to the famous temples of Angkor Wat, on beautiful Lake Tonle Sap. We cruise on this enormous lake, visiting floating villages complete with schools, restaurants and even a hospital! Witness school children getting to school by their own unique form of public transport - a row [...]

The ancient Khmer capital of Angkor is today one of the most remarkable and impressive sights in all of Asia. For much of its 600 years, the Angkor empire’s regional power was unrivalled, and under a number of its ‘god-kings’ such as Jayavarman the 7th the artistic exploits of the Khmer kingdom went unrivalled. With [...]

The word Battambang in Khmer means “disappearing stick” and was bestowed upon the town by a former king who legend says used a powerful stick to control the people. Now in more modern times it is commonly referred to as the rice bowl of Cambodia, due to the vast amount of rice produced. As Cambodia’s [...]

After independence from France in the early 1950’s, Cambodia no longer had commercial access to the big Indochinese trading port of Saigon. Kampot, an earlier colonial port on the Southeast coast of Cambodia was too small for the nation-building plans at the time. In 1964, Sihanouville was born, as was the excellent Route 4, connecting [...]

Kampot is one of Asia’s most picturesque yet least-visited towns. Small in scale, this tiny former French port is rich in atmosphere and consists of rows of old buildings, carefully-planned streets, and some great local restaurants. Kampot is also a great launching pad for trips to the former beach resort, Kep (30 minutes), Bokor Hill [...]

For French colonials of the early twentieth century, ‘Kep-sur-Mer’ was a seaside getaway and weekend retreat. From the mid-1950’s this small settlement on Cambodia’s southeast coast became a popular retreat for the Khmer elite, and in the 1960’s experienced something of a development boom. Tragically, for much of the 1980’s, this inauspicious little seaside town [...]

Once one of the gems of French colonial Indochina, after years of terror and poverty Phnom Penh is finally re-emerging as a fine South East Asian capital. Its wide, tree-lined boulevards are now busy with sparkling late-model cars, and more of her long-neglected magnificent colonial architecture is under restoration. The city’s river junction location lends [...]