Tag: Cambodia

A wide elevated view of dense rainforest canopy across the Cardamom Mountains, Cambodia

Conservation

Singapore Never Said Where the Next Fifty Years of Sand Would Come From. Cambodia’s Rivers Have an Answer.

A banned trade, a protected river, and the ambitious reclamation plan quietly depending on both. The Trapeang Rung River isn’t somewhere most people have heard of. It flows through Koh Kong province in southwest Cambodia, past mangroves and lowland forest, home to one of the world’s least understood otter species, the endangered hairy-nosed otter, before

September 5, 2026

A boatman steering a small wooden boat with an outboard motor across calm lake water toward a forested island

Newsletter

Unmasked Weekly – Issue No. 24 | 3 September 2026

A Few Words From Me… Money keeps surfacing as the theme this week, or rather the question of where it actually ends up once it’s left your hand. Marriott Bonvoy’s new partnership with the orangutan foundation in Perak is about as clean an example as you’ll find: scan a QR code at check-in in Malaysia

September 3, 2026

two ancient statues draped in bright orange robes dominate the entrance inside Angkor Wat temple

Opinion

Siem Reap Needs Tourists Now. Is It Fair to Ask the City to Wait for the Right Ones?

Cambodia’s discount campaign has split the tourism industry down the middle, and the divide says something uncomfortable about who gets to hold out for quality Cambodia’s Ministry of Tourism launched the 2026 Siem Reap Tourism Service Mega Sale on the first of August, offering discounts of 10 to 50 percent at more than fifty hotels,

August 15, 2026

Newsletter

Unmasked Weekly – Issue No. 21 | 13 August 2026

A Few Words From Me Lampang doesn’t get that much attention – even from people like myself who’ve spent years in Thailand. This week its lac-dyed textiles earned official protected status, the same kind Champagne has, which feels overdue in the best way, a craft that could easily have been left to fade (no pun

August 13, 2026

Traditional tuk-tuks parked Bangkok old city street Thailand

Opinion

Southeast Asia Is Finally Getting Serious About Its Air, but It’s the Tuk-Tuk Drivers Who Are Expected to Pay for It.

There are 8,582 registered tuk-tuks in Bangkok. As of the end of May this year, 1,056 of them, nationwide, were electric. Hold those two numbers next to each other for a second, because they explain almost everything about what’s actually happening across Southeast Asia right now, and why I think the region’s sudden enthusiasm for

August 8, 2026

Traditional tuk-tuk Bangkok old city street Thailand

Newsletter

Unmasked Weekly – Issue No. 20 | 6 August 2026

A Few Words From Me Three governments seem to have landed on the same idea this week: that how people move through a place matters as much as where they go. Thailand has started training its first proper hiking guides, launched at Khao Yai, one of the national parks that together see more than ten

August 6, 2026

Destinations

Siem Reap Has Never Been This Quiet. That’s Exactly Why You Should Go.

Angkor’s visitor numbers have fallen by a third, for reasons that have nothing to do with the temple itself. Turning up still matters. I have stood in front of Angkor Wat at sunrise exactly once, shoulder to shoulder with several hundred other people, all of us holding phones over each other’s heads trying to catch

August 1, 2026

Wat Phra Mahathat Woramahawihan Nakhon Si Thammarat Thailand UNESCO

Newsletter

Unmasked Weekly – Issue No. 18 | 23 July 2026

Around the Region Monsoon rain has put five eastern Thai provinces on flood watch this week, with harvests at real risk, while much of Western Europe swelters through drought conditions. Against that backdrop, this issue leans on recovery and renewal. Southeast Asia’s mangroves have quietly flipped from decline to regrowth, driven mainly by Indonesia and

July 22, 2026

A derelict French colonial villa near Kep, Cambodia, the kind of ruin Knai Bang Chatt's own buildings once were. Image by Adam Jones

Newsletter

Unmasked Weekly – Issue No. 15 | 2 July 2026

Around the Region Hello from Europe, where I’m currently trading Bangkok’s humidity and incessant rain for a rather more restrained kind of summer, though I won’t pretend I don’t miss the smell of a night market and being able to grab a bite to eat from a street stall at 9pm. Westerners do have stricter

July 1, 2026

Aerial view of Bohol's coastline in the Philippines showing turquoise water with boats moored along a white sand beach, framed by lush green hillsides

Newsletter

Unmasked Weekly – Issue No. 13 | 18 June 2026

Around the Region Low season is upon us, and the region is feeling a reduction in visitor numbers at community level. Each nation has its own way of attempting to plug the gap – and in Thailand’s case, that means taxing your arrival and your departure. If you’re flying out of Thailand this weekend, your

June 18, 2026