Tag: Cambodia

Travel Tips

Southeast Asia Does Not Have One Wet Season. It Has Eleven Timetables, and Most Visitors Read the Wrong One

A country-by-country guide to travelling the region from October to December, from the flooded central coast of Vietnam to Timor-Leste’s whale season Bangkok is wet again. This week the city’s drainage department reported standing water on five main road sections, and the Thai Meteorological Department expects isolated heavy to very heavy rain across the central

October 10, 2026

a couple wade through flood waters on a Bangkok street during monsoon

Newsletter

Unmasked Weekly – Issue No. 28 | 8 October 2026

A Few Words From Me There was no issue last week, and I owe you a short explanation: I spent most of it getting back to Bangkok, a journey that always takes longer than the flight suggests. I arrived to serious flooding, and water is still standing in up country Bangkok and the provinces around

October 8, 2026

A tall golden stupa rising above a ring of smaller golden spires and a cloister wall, against a golden morning sunrise

Newsletter

Unmasked Weekly – Issue No. 27 | 24 September 2026

A Few Words From Me Some good news from the Mekong to start with, and it’s been a while since I could write that sentence with a straight face. In Kratie, up in Cambodia’s northeast, the Irrawaddy dolphin count is heading the right way, and after writing in August about the Laos side of the

September 23, 2026

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