Water Festival

The annual three-day Water Festival competes with the Khmer New Year for being the most important holiday for Cambodians. The boat races on the Tonle Sap and the carnival atmosphere ashore attract millons of people from all over the country. A smaller Water Festival is held around Angkor Wat, but for the real thing you’ll have [...]  Detail

Preah Vihear card in play following UNESCO listing

Since Monday’s decision by UNESCO to list Preah Vihear temple as a Cambodian World Heritage Site, the Kingdom’s nationalist rapture has subsided just enough to allow for more pragmatic thoughts of the pay-off. Senior Cambodian People’s Party lawmaker Cheam Yeap said July 10 that he expected the listing of the 11th-century Hindu temple, which had long [...]  Detail

Cambodia turns Killing Fields into agricultural success

Phnom Penh - Images of a country desolated by the Khmer Rouge, an entire population put to work in the rice fields and yet dying by the hundreds of thousands of starvation, still haunts Cambodia. But since the ultra-Maoist’s disastrous drive from 1975 to 1979 to turn the country into an agrarian utopia bereft of markets, [...]  Detail

Royal Ploughing Ceremony

Although there are various other scientific methods to forecast the weather and to determine harvests, Cambodians have their methods to foretell the future. Through traditional rituals that are often ceremoniously celebrated nationwide, Cambodians are warned of calamities, assured of good harvest and so forth. The Royal Ploughing ceremony, or Pithi Chrat Preah Neanng Korl in Khmer, [...]  Detail

Bonn Visak Bochea - Mid May, one day

This nationwide festival commemorates the day of the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death. Held during the sixth full moon of the lunar calendar, it involves chanting, sermons and a candlelit procession to the wat.   Detail

Traditional festivals

Khmers’ love of family social events, with music and an abundance of food, is best seen at the numerous festivals which are now once again being held throughout the country. There follows a list of the more important national and regional festivals in the Khmer calendar: Victory Day 7 January This national holiday commemorates the fall of Pol Pot’s [...]  Detail

A new destination - Mondulkiri

It really is another Cambodia altogether, with scenery and a climate quite unlike anywhere else in the country. It can get quite chilly at night, so make sure you carry something warm. It is the most sparsely and a climate quite unlike anywhere else in the country. It can get quite chilly at night, so [...]  Detail