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…
A few images of some of the hard-working women in Phsa Prahok, Battambang’s fish market, taken over the course of several recent visits, To point out that topping and tailing fish all day long, every day, is extremely laborious, dirty and tiring would be rather stating the obvious and certainly a very tough way of earning a living. We can…
Some Vietnam and Cambodia photos gratefully received from David taken on his recent 2-week Saigon to Phnom Penh Overland tour. Keeping the blurb to a minimum and in approximately the correct order then we have… A tight squeeze for David at Cu Chi David struggling to emerge from one of the Vietcong tunnels at Cu Chi, near Saigon (Ho Chi…
A few photos from our recent Cambodia Overland tour: good trip, great bunch of travellers and we think, (hope), much fun had by all! First up a colourful collection of hats on the fried spider and grub vendors in Kompong Cham Province’s Skuon Town – on route for Siem Reap. The rainy season weather held out well for us too…
A new addition to our Cambodia itinerary, this half-day tour to discover some of the local ‘cottage industries’ in one of the villages outside of Battambang has proved very popular. Also very practical since it can just as easily be done by bicycle or by tuk-tuk for the less energetic and the 3 or 4 hour round tour then leaves…
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…
Once again perfect weather for this ‘rainy season’ tour of Cambodia – clear blue, dust-free skies providing some great landscape views, enough fluffy white clouds about for pretty photos and the occasional evening shower to cool things down. As with our recent Burma tour, the relative lack of crowds was also a big plus – particularly at popular sites such…
Our boat journey through Cambodia from Siem Reap, across the Tonle Sap Lake and down the Sangkar River to Western Cambodia’s Battambang Town, was a particularly tricky one this month due to the combination of low water levels on the lake and a slow current on the river itself which had lead to a serious build-up of the pestilent water…
Kompong Chhnang, Cambodia, a provincial capital lying on the bank of the Tonle Sap River some 2 hours north of Phnom Penh and without a doubt one of Cambodia’s most interesting and photogenic regional towns. (Yes we’ve already posted a couple of articles about Kompong Chnang but we reckon it’s so good a few more photos won’t hurt!) For much…
The stunning sandstone lintel below – from Sikhoraphum, Surin, Thailand – is an astonishingly well-preserved example of Angkor carving with sharp detail, deep relief and complex and intricate subject matter; – a masterpiece and certainly representing an incredible amount of work! Furthermore, its creation was undoubtedly even more complicated than you would imagine. It wasn’t just a case of a…
A selection of photos from our Cambodia Overland tour or at least the Cambodia section of various tours since Dan and Sara, having signed up for the Indochina Adventure, had already travelled through Northern Thailand and Laos for a couple of weeks and Yvette was doing Cambodia as part of a Saigon to Phnom Penh Overland tour. First pic then…
We’ll round up our Cambodia boat journey series on this highly picturesque river with a selection of typical Sangkar River landscapes. We do feel that photos, or at least our photos, don’t really do the scenery justice though. It’s not like trying to capture a beach, mountain or say a sunset – these are such broad vistas and 360-degree landscapes…
Following on from our bird-life post here’s a selection of some of the everyday, local life on the Sangkar River we’ve photographed on recent trips along this spectacular, picturesque and unusual river in western Cambodia: The lower stretch of the river, closer to the great Tonle Sap Lake sees the largest fluctuation in water levels between rainy and dry season…
A few photos of some of the spectacular bird-life on the Sangkar River we’ve come across on recent boat trips down from Siem Reap to Battambang. (Would have a lot more for you but since it’s tricky getting sharp shots of fast-moving birds from a heavily vibrating boat we had to delete most of them!?) The Sangkar River begins in…
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…
Following on from our recent aerial pix of Penang’s George Town post here’s a few shots of some of the lovingly restored buildings of UNESCO-listed Chinatown Penang (Pinang) at street level. First up – the 19th-century Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion in Leith Street is probably the most iconic of George Town’s Chinese heritage buildings and certainly one of the most…
A selection of pix from our recent Cambodia family tour, Ruined Cities and Tropical Islands. First up – a pavement haircut for Zach who quickly realised Cambodia was going to be too hot for a ponytail so…Barber did charge the ‘Barang’ rate of $3, claiming he’d never had to cut so much hair before – fair enough I guess!? Next,…
To conclude our recent Cambodia Overland tour here’s a few pictures from the final section – the road to Pailin – which takes us from Battambang to the Thai border. The road is now more or less complete thanks to funding from the Chinese government and the 0 kilometres or so is easily done in 2 hours including coffee break….