The Southeast Asia Travel Specialists Since 1999
What follows is a brief account and selection of photos of our Cambodia boat trip from Siem Reap to Battambang. I think we first ran this Cambodia boat trip way back in 2000. It was a very different country in those days and the journey across the Tonle Sap and up the Sangkar River to Battambang was an adventurous…
The mouth of western Cambodia’s Sangkar (or Sangkae) River lies concealed amid a maze of water-hyacinth clogged waterways, endless reed marshes and clouds of egrets in the far northwestern corner of the vast but shallow Tonle Sap Lake. Anyone with a window seat between Bangkok and Siem Reap may have peered down on these extensive wetlands and unique eco-system where…
Costing the Apopo organisation around 6,000 Euros each, including training and importation, these are certainly the world’s most expensive rodents yet when you see the giant African rats – or Gambian pouched rats to be precise, Cricetomys gambianus – in action, you’ll understand why. Easier to maintain and handle than trained dogs (and much lighter so less likely to set…
Traditionally the kingdom’s 2nd largest city, the western town of Battambang Cambodia has surely been overtaken by now by booming Siem Reap and although still relatively prosperous from the Province’s fine farming land, (indeed it’s sometimes known as ‘Cambodia’s rice bowl’), it has been largely bypassed by the country’s tourism boom. Well until recently that is but these days Battambang’s…
The famous floating villages and fishing communities around Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake are well known with the more easily accessible ones such as Chong Kneas and Kompong Phleuk now firmly on tourist itineraries. Far less known are these river nomads of western Cambodia – people who spend the whole year travelling up and down the rivers leading into the huge…
Already did a photographs of Kompong Chhnang post on the fascinating market of this provincial Cambodian town but thought we’d add a few rainy season photographs for good measure since the views do change radically with the change in water levels. With the market being located right on the Tonle Sap riverbank, high water means the boats can unload their…
Giant gnarled trees rise from huge piles of sandstone blocks; spreading roots and sprawling vines cloak massive walls, dense foliage obscures crumbling towers and moss and lichen conceal intricate carvings. Cambodia’s Beng Melea; chaotic, decaying ancient ruins and rampant tropical vegetation is a perfect synthesis of man’s handiwork and untamed nature yet, ultimate[y, a complete antithesis of what it was…
Thanks very much to Blanca who actually mailed us these Cambodian boat journey photos ages ago but which we only recently retrieved from a semi-redundant in-box! Now getting out and pushing trucks, buses and assorted vehicles stuck in the mud is part of adventure tour mythology but on the Cambodia Overland tour in question we thought we’d better go one…
A bit rushed today -no time to write a blog post – so we’ll fall back on a few classic dawn at Angkor Wat pictures, which you can never have too many of (can you)? Must have watched the dawn rise over the famous silhouette at least 30 times but it never gets boring! Different time of year, different weather,…
Xe Quit has always been one of our favourite stops on our 3-day Mekong Delta programme; – the dense, lush, impenetrable jungle with monkey shrieks and exotic bird squawks and the swampy, dark waters full of unidentified splashes and ripples just sum up how we’d always imagined the exotic-soundi0ng Mekong Delta to be in the days when it was just…
Just received some excellent Cambodia overland – photos from Gerry who participated in our recent Vietnam and Cambodia tour so, though there are way too many good ones to post here, (he claims to have taken over 3,000 photos in 2 weeks!), we’d like to stick up a few for your perusal! (Gerry’s captions, our comments.) Classic Cambodian shot –…