cambopedia

Lady Penh: review

Don’t know what to do in Phnom Penh? Ask Lady Penh!
If you’re interested in what you might want to do in Phnom Penh, a dedicated site Lady Penh is the right one for you. It’s for both expatriates and visitors who want to make the most out of the day attending cultural related events in Phnom Penh. The name of the site, Lady Penh, implies the name of the legendary founder, Daun (Grandma) Penh, of the capital city.

You can find new updates of some of the most interesting events happening in town. Rather than just a one-stop of activity calendar for visitors and tourists, the site provides detail information about each event that you wouldn’t want to miss.

Lady Penh – this website – is all about events in Phnom Penh. We are a bunch of fellow PhnomPenhers with the feeling that our city is somewhat at crossroads: it’s getting kind of tough to keep track of what’s going on here – which had not been too hard until 2009 (to say the least). Phnom Penh is awakening… And this website is our participation to this process.

A nice feature of the site is its printable weekly version, which can be found here. In addition to this, if you’re a Facebooker, you can easily get connected with Lady Penh via Facebook Group page.

Web address: http://ladypenh.com/

The Kingdom of mystery?

In a recent blog post, Cambodian blogger Somongkol made a reaction to Anita Saran, a writer at Edubook , who made claim that Cambodia is one of the most dangerous tourist zones in Asia.

This writer really needs to read more news and do more REAL RESEARCH. What is mentioned here about Cambodia is completely outdated. That was Cambodia in the mid-90s, not 2009.

So much that Cambodian bloggers care about how Cambodia is known to people in other countries. In another blog post dated back to September 2006, a Siem Reap-based blogger asked ‘How much do foreigners know about Cambodia?’

I’m not saying that they should write only the positive things about Cambodia. But there should be a media balance. Because it’s the media which teaches people. Talking about balance, I’m glad that it appears that there is increasingly more positive awareness about Cambodia amongst foreigners especially tourists and expats. They are really helping reducing the negative perception on Cambodia through words of mouth, blogs and online communities.

This comes the recent promotional effort by Cambodia’s Ministry of Tourism. ‘The Kingdom of Wonder’ has now become a new way to brand Cambodia in local and international mainstream media.

From Phnom Penh to Battambang

Energetic travelers Matt and Debz continue their trip from Phnom Penh (where they wrote about their visit to Cambodia’s S-21) to Battambang. For the complete travel note with beautiful photographs, please take a look at this.

Koreans living in Cambodia

According to Cambodia’s Mirror, it’s estimated that there are about 4,000 Koreans living in Cambodia. Not surprisingly, South Korea becomes one of the largest foreign investors in the Kingdom after China.

In a recent blog post (Observations and Reflection from Korea – Sunday, 1.11.2009) by Norbert Klein, a long-time expatriate, the Cambodian capital is about to lose its Boeng Kak Lake, largely to contributed to the city development.

And there are not only technicality related disruptions. I took the following picture of the Boeng Kak Lake in Phnom Penh some years ago, leaving for Bangkok. Many big cities around the world maintain their lakes or rivers, or even create artificial ones. The Phnom Penh administration is destroying what there is – filling about 90 % of the lake with sand for higher level business, also displacing about 4,000 families.

French-influenced architecture: cityscape

Cambodian photoblogger ‘tumnei’ recently posted two photos of a French-erected building, taken in Phnom Penh. The first picture distinguishes itself from the second one only that the building gets renovated as part of a larger program, mostly financed by the French government. Another bigger project is taking place at the Central Market, also known as Phsar Thmey.

Battambang's bamboo train

Cambodia is actually not an industrialized country; this nation does not manufacture automobiles. But to many people’s surprise, imported used-vehicles can be fixed and continued to be used nation-wide. That said, Cambodia’s railways were destroyed during the civil war, and people have to make something out of the damaged system. It comes to this much known bamboo train, a renovated transportation system for a small number of passengers and goods.

The Bamboo Train is something that is made possible due to the badly maintained railway system in Cambodia. The government is in the process of modernizing the railways throughout the country and, whether inadvertently or not, is going to put an end to one of Battambang’s most enjoyable experiences.