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…
An excursion to discover the (very) hidden Angkor-period Prei Khmeng Temple Cambodia. You can find an ancient Khmer temple marked on a map or dig one up on Google – Cambodia is covered in Angkorian and pre-Angkorian ruins – but for only a tiny fraction, notably, the most famous ones, will you find any accompanying images or explanations. Discovering what…
Discovering the remote Banteay Ampil Temple Cambodia. We’d been wanting to check out the rather remote and very rarely visited 12th century ruined temple of Banteay Ampil for a long time and so a free (and sunny) day after finishing a Highlights of Cambodia tour seemed like a good opportunity to have a go at reaching what are certainly some…
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…
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…
A selection of photographs of Koh Ker, aka Chok Gargyar or Lingapura, as it was originally named. The ruined city is a remote site lying in the forest some 3 hours northeast of Siem Reap in Preah Vihear Province. For a brief period in the first half of the 10th-century, the ‘City of Lingas’ replaced Angkor as the imperial capital…
As we maintained in our recent – ‘Cambodia tours – what’s the food like post’ – after having taken a backseat to its more culinarily illustrious neighbours Vietnam and Thailand – Khmer cuisine is making great strides of late so, without further ado, here’s a selection of 10 Cambodia dishes to try among the kingdom’s varied and surprisingly tasty food…
Khmer cooking has traditionally takes a backseat compared to the more prestigious and much better-known cuisines of its neighbours Thailand and Vietnam and obviously, the population have had far more serious concerns during much of their recent history but Cambodian food is making a strong come back of late and more and more excellent eateries are appearing in larger towns…
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…
That’s Preah Vihear Temple to the Khmers or Khao Preah Viharn for the Thais. The recently promoted UNESCO World Heritage site is situated smack bang on the border and yes….you may well have noticed in the news that there have been a few border ‘issues’ between the two countries in recent times. Note the disagreement has never been over ownership…
“But the coffee doesn’t taste the same as at home”. How manky times have we heard that? Funny, (funny peculiar), how someone travelling half-way around the world would expect certain things to be different yet hope, (assume), that other things would be the same. Now the people have to be different; the photogenic orange-clad monks are essential, heaven forbid if…
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…
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…
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…
Just a few pix from our latest visit to the Prek Toal Saray Water Hyacinth Handicraft Project in Cambodia’s Siem Reap Province. Already mentioned this excellent scheme a few times before, (e.g. see here), so won’t go into any details for now but thought we’d add a few photos on the subject since our recent trip was by far the…
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…