THE INDOCHINEEX BLOG
Prek Toal the Hard Way
Prek Toal The Hard Way (by kayak) The current was flooding up the channel and a Southerly headwind was blowing as we set off from the boat station at Maichrey. Clouds grew dark then faded or pulled down by the weight of the moist air they released heavy drops of rain,...
Countryside Exploration Cycles
Countryside Exploration Cycle The Siem Reap countryside is changing all the time as the town spreads but its not long before the hard road becomes a track and the houses are raised on stilts. Lors and Taylor cycling one of our mountain bike routes around Siem Reap A...
Prek Toal on finfoot
Prek Toal on finfoot The incredibly rare milky adjutant lived in Prek Toal and it was my mission to save it even before I got to Cambodia and realized there isn’t a milky adjutant it’s a Milky Stork and a Greater Adjutant. Undeterred enthusiasm intact, Prek Toal was...
Route 66 An Angkorian Adventure
Route 66 - An Angkorian Adventure This is the story of a family’s adventures along an ancient Angkorian Highway in search of temples hidden in the forest. A thousand years ago a canal was dug to ferry the giant blocks of stone that were used to build the temples of...
Puok River Recce
Puok River (that wasn’t) Recce ‘To boldly go where most sane Khmer’s don’t.’ We knew the launch point beside the Angkor Crau Bridge though Sokun (tuktuk driver and Indochineex adventure guide) found it immensely funny that we hadn’t a clue where we were going. Nick...
A Night on Kulen Mountain
A Kulen Mountain Adventure Our quest was to seek out the Silver Langur in the forests of Kulen Mountain and whatever other wildlife came our way. ‘Nick I’ve been to Corbett, Kana and Tadoba in India. The Serengeti, The Okavango, etc in Africa, but I don’t expect...
Ngin and Nicola’s Saturday Morning Temple Hunting Adventure
Ngin and Nicola’s Temple Hunting Saturday Morning Adventure An essential Large Little Red Fox latte while Loklak snapped at a French lady then into Panya’s tuktuk for the ride to Phnom Bok. Panya had the unnecessary ability to find every pothole on the admittedly...
Buntha and Nick’s Saturday Morning Kayaking Adventure
A million miles from the dusty city center and the tour buses jamming the road to Angkor lies the ancient lake of Boeung Ta Neue. Our mission that morning was to discover if this was a kayaking adventure or just a paddle on a large pond. Lake Ta Neue The lake lies at...
Temple Hunting Around Angkor
Temple Hunting in The Angkor Countryside The countryside surrounding Angkor is one of paddy fields and sugar palms. Dotted with small villages of traditional wooden houses built on stilts surrounded by fruit trees. Trapaeng or pools, vast ancient baray or reservoirs...
Prek Toal by Way of Phnom Kraum
All adventures start with an extra hot latte crafted by Mex at the Little Red Fox Coffee Shop and the morning crew; Jady - temple water management and Darryl the Angkorian historian. Feathercraft kayak on top of Dy’s electric blue Highlander, Solar kayaks, Lors,...
In Search of a White Elephant
In Search of a White Elephant Our quest for the day was to find Boeung P’Rieng, a lake amidst flooded forests on the edge of The Great Tonle Sap that is subsumed when the back flow begins and the water levels in the lake rise. Previous attempts had started in much the...
An Angkorian Paddle
Background The rise and fall of the Angkorian Empire, which lasted 500 years from the 9th to 14th century, was centered in what is now Siem Reap Province, around its greatest monument Angkor Wat. A population of a million in an area of 1000 km2 serviced the empire and...
New Khmer Architecture
NEW KHMER ARCHITECTURE Architecture was part of a new exuberant and modernistic Khmer movement encouraged by King Sihanouk and expressed in music, dance, film and architecture, not seen in neighboring parts of Indochina when Cambodia gained independence in 1953. The...
The Stone Cities of Cambodia
THE STONE CITIES OF CAMBODIA Banteay Chma We cheated. We had a helicopter. It would have taken the late nineteenth century French explorers years to hack through the jungles of Cambodia to alight on the lost Atlantis (plural) that we’d planned for our guests that...
Lena and Seb’s Battambang Adventure
Lena & Seb’s Battambang Adventure Day 1 Vans, big motorboats, little motorboats, kayaks, bicycles, trains and taxis all had a part to play in our adventure on route from Siem Reap to Battambang. Overnight in the floating village of Prek Toal and the flooded...
The Road to Nowhere
A Race to the Middle of Nowhere – The Scramble for Kulen with apologies to Thomas Packenham (The Scramble for Africa*) We were about a thousand years too late but then it wasn’t for the first time, the Angkorians had been here before. And anyway the British, French,...
Dry Season Temple Hunting Safari
The Dry Season Temple Hunting Jeep Safari We travel in reverse chronological order starting with 2 temples from the Bayon period. The Buddhist king Jayavarman VII (or JVII for short) crammed into his thirty year rule the largest building program ever undertaken during...
The Adventures of BeTreed
A BeTreed Blog or The Adventures of BeTreed BeTreed by myself in January 2017 (A BeTreed Adventure; https://indochineex.com/blog/a-betreed-adventure), Then the Phnom Tnaut hike with Buntha and the boys. Hiking in the hills along snake trails and dodging trees while...