Taking a look at Cambodian capital Phnom Penh from the space is made possible with Google Earth. A Cambodian blogger in the U.S. posted a series of screenshots of Phnom Penh’s most interesting places to visit: Independence Monument, Wat Phnom, Royal Palace, Chaktomuk Theater, National Museum & Veal Men, Sisowath Quay, Central Market, Senate, Le Royal Hotel, Olympic Stadium, Tuol Sleng Museum, Boeng Kak, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Institute of Foreign Languages, Chroy Changva Bridge, Building and Tonle Bassac Theater, Sorya Shopping Center, Municipal Water Supply Department, and Phnom Penh International Airport.

Via Telegraph Blogs, Online Travel Editor Francisca Kellett wrote ‘Sun and rain in Phnom Penh‘:

Today, though, the skies have darkened and there’s a weird sort of brittle pressure in the air.
We’ve just arrived in Phnom Penh, the sprawling capital, and a hot wind is wafting in off the Tonle Sap river. The rain will be a welcome blessing; maybe the air will loose its cloying stickiness for a few hours. It’s been an incredible six days. We arrived in the staggering city of Siem Reap last Monday.

Cambodian blogger Mongkol posted a full AP news article on ‘Tourism boom brings hope, worry to Siem Reap‘. The news headline tells readers what the reporter intends to tell his/her readers.

The steady boom has already transformed Siem Reap into a bustling town filled with luxury hotels and vehicles. Its streets are adorned with billboards promoting the latest mobile phones, pizza and burger joints and shopping malls. Several notable old buildings have been razed to make way for visitors’ lodgings, and honky-tonk strips have sprung up catering to low-budget travelers.

Plus: Angkor-Gyeongju World Culture Expo 2006 Begins Today! And World Culture Expo in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Even though Angkor Wat is very well-known in the world and this wonder has attracted millions of tourists to Cambodia, this country is rarely catch the attention of the world. Today, as Cambodia is hosting the Angkor-Gyeongju World Culture Expo in Siem Reap, the city of the 7th world wonder, let’s see what’s in the news about Cambodia and how the world sees Cambodia.

World Exposition at Angkor

It will provide a place of harmonious encounter between Angkor Wat historic sites of Cambodia, one the world’s seven mysteries, and the brilliant culture of the millennial Silla. Combining the rich cultural contents of the world-renowned Gyeongju World Culture EXPO, the Angkor-Gyeongju World Gulture EXPO will make its mark once more on the world in 2006.

As some hundred thousand Cambodians flocked to Phnom Penh to celebrate the annual Water Festival, Saorla visited Keb, a sleepy beach town of Kampot. Many beautiful pictures are also available.

I went to Kep for the Water Festival. Most everyone I know got out of Phnom Penh as millions were diverging on the city. Kep was beautiful as always. I stayed at Veranda Guesthouse which consists of wooden cabins on stilts – pic number three is the outside of mine. I have more photos taken with an analog camera which I will post when I get around to developing them.

Blogger at Holding Hands in Phnom Penh lets us know that world traveling cyclists, Ben and Gen, are now in Cambodia after making a long trip to travel the world.

Ben and Gen are cyclists and are 10 months into a world tour. They estimate that they will be traveling by bicycle for another 2 years before getting back home to Quebec in Canada. We met through a website called Warm Showers, which I joined after finishing my own bicycle tour from England to Gibraltar, and as I watched them rolling away this morning, down the road towards the sea, I was reminded of my own promise to myself that I would do another, longer, cycle tour someday.

Is it hard to describe this Southeast asian nation in several paragraphs? In a sense, perhaps it is not that easy to come up with something in your mind to express a place and people you visited and encountered.

On the brighter side the Cambodian people take extreme pride in their past and specifically in Angkor – one of the true wonders of the world. The main temple Angkor Wat is present as a logo just about everywhere from the Cambodian flag down to the beer can. If you visit the immense temple complex it will blow you out of your socks. At the time the Khmer empire was at its height (~1200 A.D) the Angkor city had more than a mio. citizens – London and Paris were dwarfish in comparison. Eventually the empire collapsed and Angkor was almost forgotten and overgrown by the jungle. It was probably Hollywood with a couple of movies which caused the tourism potential to explode.

According to Malaysian online news, within the next few months, Cambodia will begin laying rail tracks donated by Malaysia.

Transport Minister Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy said Friday the first load of tracks had arrived in Aranyaprathet, the Thai border town with Cambodia, and the transfer of five more batches would be completed by the middle of next month.
“The tracks arrived yesterday morning. Cambodia will commence work on the Poipet-Sisophon link by early next year and it will be completed in 2009,” Chan said after chairing the eighth special working group meeting on the SKRL here.

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Here we go, Cambodia is set to host Water Festival, The pirogue Racing Festival, or Bon Om Touk in Khmer, one of its biggest festivals early this November.

One of the largest festivals of Cambodia revolves around the Tonle Sap. The three-day Water festival of the reversal of the waters of the Great Lake is celebrated in October or November depending on when the waters reverse and flow back into the Mekong River. Boat races, the largest part of the festival, are held at the capital, Phnom Penh. Each village has the opportunity to join in the boat races and usually they do. The boats are usually dugout canoes with a prow and stern that curve upward. The boats are elaborately decorated and carved to represent the village. The prow is painted with a large eye like those that decorated the war vessels of ancient times.

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