Cambopedia

Began a song by Sin Sisamuth, Cambodia’s most well-known singer of all time. The song tells the lifestyle of Cambodians in Battambang, its beautiful nature, and its romantic scene.

We stepped off the bus in Battambang, Cambodia’s second largest city. Motorbike taxi drivers waited to ferry us to our hotel. Normally, I would have rejected their services, but the midday heat along with their offer to drive us for free hooked me. My driver’s name was Sambath, or Bath, and he spoke immaculate English. He asked me the usual questions: how long have you been in Cambodia, how long will you stay in Battambang, where are you from? I told him, as I tell everyone, “I’m an American, but I live in Japan.” He smiled and said an American living in Japan had just stayed with him, in the homestay he ran. My ears perked up.

Chel & Sois posted an entry titled Special “Tuk-Tuk” Greetings !!!. In the post, the blogger featured a video clip of a trip on Tonle Sap, South-East Asia’s largest freshwater lake.

To be a little more specific, Tonle Sap is actually a combination of a lake and a river system. This is system is very important to Cambodia because the lake massively floods each year (it swells from a mere 2700 square km to approximately 16000 square km) during the Monsoon (rain season). The flood creates an enormous habitat for countless species of fish to spawn thus providing the Cambodians with a doorstep seafood buffet.

What Phnom Penh looks like two years ago? There are probably just too many things to describe. But here we go:

I spent yesterday exploring Phnom Penh in a leisurely and somewhat disorganised fashion and got to see a few interesting things. Cambodia is exploding at the moment - more and more people are coming here and more money is being ploughed into everything so the city seems to have a greater energy than it did when I was here almost two years ago.

Toshiro Yamaguchi jotted down her travel experiece from Cambodia’s most famous Siem Reap to sleepy town of Kampot, Keb.

So I am quite pleased when she says she can come to Kep, then to Koh Tonsey with me the following day. Koh Tonsey is a small island on a remote shoe near Cambodian/Vietnamese border. The name means Rabbit Island for its shape. Sunday morning after I find a temple in town where i can meditate, i rent myself a moto and two of us are off to Kep, a posh harbour town with many abandoned buildings from French colonial era.

Blogger at ‘An MSW in Cambodia’ has an interesting post of her visit to Sovanna Phum, an independent Khmer art association in Phnom Penh. There, she enjoyed the show the treasures of Khmer culture (Shadow Puppet Theatre, Classical Dance, Folk Dance, Traditional Music, Theatre and Circus). In the post, you will also find pictures and video clips of the performance.

Sovanna Phum is really one of the best places to see traditional arts here in Cambodia. Tickets for the night were only $5.00. My favorite part about the organization, however, was that after the show had started, they allow kids to come in from the streets free of charge and fill any seats that were empty. So many time (including in the US) if you are a child that does not come from a middle or upper class family– you never get to really see the arts.

sailorjes at ‘the offseason’ writes about a trip of “off the beaten path” to the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Sanctuary.

The sandy road leading up to the wildlife sanctuary was lined with beggars and weird men in 8-foot tall Carnivale-esque costumes. We arrived to a place that was dusty and brown, with little separating it from the surrounding flatlands. Entrance cost $5, exorbitant in Cambodia, especially when the locals only had to pay $1. At the entrance to the zoo, children selling bamboo hats and fruit swarmed around us and, for the rest of our time there, we were followed by the same children trying to sell us either coconuts or their guide services.

Asked by his foreign classmate about Khmer wedding, Cambodian blogger Mongkol has an answer in his version as follow:

One of the most important rituals in a Cambodian’s life is their wedding. A proper Khmer wedding is very colorful and filled with ceremonies and celebrations. It can last from as short as one morning to as long as three days and nights, depending on the financial situation and social status of the bride and groom’s families.

Analog Cambodia has an interesting piece about Phnom Bros and Phnom Penh Srei (Man and Woman Hill) of Kampong Cham prvince.

The two hills have housed temples and been places of worship for possibly hundreds of years, but the temples currently there date from the mid 20th century. Like most temples of their kind and age they were used by the Khmer Rouge for a prison and torture centre. The dark days are long behind the hills now and the hilltops temples have been restored and, in true Khmer style, house beautiful yet garish paintings on the walls and ceiling.

A Khmer American at oudam.com writes about his upcoming trip to Cambodia from the United States of America. After his family left Cambodia as refugees to settle in the U.S. in 1981, this will be his seventh trip back to his family’s home country. Yet, he sees Cambodia a second-home.

On my first trip back to Cambodia I really did not know what to expect. Since I left at the age of just nine years old, my memory of Srok Khmer was at best limited to bits and pieces of events that took place in the Killing Fields. I could recall being hungry and having to work all the time, but I could remember very few details about our whereabouts or what was happening around us.

Photoblogger at mythicaldude has a series of interesting pictures of his trip to Udong, Cambodia’s capital city between 1618 and 1866. With this link, you will be able to meet some people of Cambodian Muslim community.

While I certianly enjoyed the magnificent vista from the beautiful new pagoda at the top of 509 steps, my main mission for the day was to visit Cham (Cambodian Muslim) communities in the Udong vicinity. There were a group of white-clad Buddhist pilgrims praying at the temple when I arrived.

Other photo of Phnom Udong can also be found here, by Stefan at Cambodia Log.

There are two separate buildings on this hill top. The one to the right looks like a temple, but it is a mosque. I remember reading an excellent text by William Collins about the Chams in Cambodia. Chams are a Muslim minority, successors of the Kingdom of Champa which used to exist on the territory of today’s Vietnam. Among other things, Williams reports that Udong is a spiritual and religious centre where the language and culture of the Chams is maintained and preserved today.