THE INDOCHINEEX BLOG
A Kulen Mountain Bike Odessy
A Kulen Mountain Bike Temple Odyssey Phnom Kulen lit Kulen Mountain or Mountain of The Lychees is our mountain bike playground, bisected by the Kulen super highway (in fact a red earth road), which climbs the mountain at the Western end. Runs to the central tourist...
The Road to Nowhere
The Race to the Middle of Nowhere – The Scramble for Kulen 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, Germans and Italians took it in turns to claim large chunks of...
A Family Get Together
An Audience with a Northern Buff Cheeked Crested Gibbon Etiquette is important in the ape world, or are they monkeys? It all depends on how long the arms are – long, so apes like us, which makes us relatives and our meeting a family call. We invited the Northern …....
The Mobileiron Mekong Challenge
The Mobileiron Mekong Challenge The Setting The Mekong, its islands, public ferries and the East Bank, the antidote to a frenetic Phnom Penh on the other side of the river. Areykhsat on the East Bank of The Mekong Phnom Penh on the West bank of The Mekong The...
The Sangke River Kayak
The Sangke River Kayak This is the story of 5 men and their boats as they paddled across the floodplain of The Tonle Sap Great Lake from Battambang to Angkor. We couldn’t let our muscles go to waste so despite we’d 3 days ahead of us and an unknown quantity of...
A Water Hyacinth Workout
A Water Hyacinth Workout Heang was waiting at the Maichrey Boat Station with what looked liked the oldest wooden boat Bo the owner could find. The Team sprang into action, had the kayaks out the car, inflated and up on the roof of the relic that was taking us into The...
The Story of Jayavarman VII as told by his temples
JVII (Aka Jayavarman VII) with apologies to The Angkorian Empire It gets confusing, 26 kings all ending in – varman, building thousands of temples and ruling for 500 years. So today’s story is going to concentrate on just one...
My Holiday
Land of a Thousand Hills – or was it lakes Drinking Tusker overlooking the valleys of Kigali City shrouded in wisps of dissipating cloud, the city appeared bottle green after flying across the brown plains of Africa. The Virunga Volcanoes The Embraer to Kigali was...
An Angkorian Paddle
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...
A BeTreed Adventure
A BeTreed Adventure Waived away by the staff, who’ve sort of got used to my bizarre behavior. Legs aside my trusted steed. In this case a new 125cc Honda Dream. Gloves, scarf, helmet, a hat in the front basket and most importantly an incredibly complicated set of...
Prek Toal by way of Phnom Kraum
Prek Toal by Way of Phnom Kraum All adventures start with The Little Red Fox Coffee Shop and the morning crew; Jady this time with temple water management people and Darryl the Angkorian historian. Feathercraft on top of Dy’s electric blue Highlander. Our Solar...
The North West Passage
THE NORTH WEST PASSAGE Our mission to boldly go where no kayak had ever been before. As an avid reader of the Indochine Exploration Blogs you will be aware of my sexual fantasies around water management in Angkor. I am not alone and discovered over a latte at Little...
In Search of a White Elephant (or a Smiling Albino)
In Search of a White Elephant (or a Smiling Albino) Our quest for the day was Boeung P’Rieng, a lake in amidst flooded forests on the edge of The Great Tonle Sap that will be subsumed when the back flow begins and the water levels rise. Previous attempts had started...
The New Khmer Movement
NEW KHMER ARCHITECTURE (NKA) Architecture was part of a new exuberant and modernistic Khmer movement encouraged by King Sihanouk and expressed in music, dance, film and architecture, that was not seen in neighbouring parts of Indochina when they gained independence....
Hydrology Made Sexy
HYDROLOGY MADE SEXY Angkor is an amazing place. You can not fail to be impressed even stunned by the grandeur, detail and scale of the monuments. The true wonder of the Angkorian Empire and what it had achieved had only started to dawn on me in the last few years. It...
Temple Hunting with Zsu Zsa and Lors
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 and the rivers and channels that still...
BUNTHA AND NICK’S SATURDAY MORNING KAYAKING EXPLORATION
BUNTHA AND NICK’S SATURDAY MORNING KAYAKING EXPLORATION A million miles from the dusty city centre 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...
Ngin and Nicola’s Temple Hunting Saturday Morning 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 journey to Phnom Bok. Panya had the unnecessary ability to find every pothole on the...