Great hotel and travel tips for SE Asia

In the comments posted at the bottom of this New York Times advice column:
Q&A: Southeast Asia Budget
Travelers have listed budget hotels and guest houses in Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and other great places.

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Book review: The Gods Drink Whiskey

The Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha, by Stephen T. Asma (2005). See it at Amazon.com.
Before I left the U.S. to go traveling in Cambodia this summer, I searched and asked around for recommendations for non-history books, not travel guidebooks, about Cambodia. A lot of titles came [...]

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Cambodia and the Killing Fields

Yesterday I watched two films — the documentary S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, and the feature The Killing Fields (1984). I rented both DVDs from Netflix.
Yeah, this was not fun, popcorn-munching movie time. But what happened — what often happens when I travel — was that I got exposed to things I knew very [...]

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Boat ride to Siem Reap

Back in May, I was on a tour in Cambodia, and we traveled for several hours in a very simple motorboat from Battambang to Siem Reap. I wrote a bit about this earlier. Now I’ve posted the photos — see the slideshow to get a sense of life along the river in northern Cambodia.

This was [...]

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Video: Rice Paper Crepes, Cambodia

I shot this video in a rural village near Battambang, Cambodia, in May:

Edited in Final Cut Pro. Please note that if you go to the YouTube page, you can watch it in higher quality mode (and it’s much nicer). The link is below the video on the right side. I wish [...]

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Khmer food (a summary)

The foods of Thailand and Vietnam are famous; the foods of Cambodia and Malaysia much less so. I’m a huge fan of Malaysian food, and of course I love most Thai and Vietnamese dishes — but what about the cuisine of the Khmers of Cambodia?

Chicken sour soup: Served with rice on the side. Tart and [...]

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Adieu, Cambodia

This morning I rode a tuk-tuk with all my luggage on the dusty, crowded road to the Phnom Penh International Airport (it’s small but quite modern). Now I’m in a nice hotel on Dong Khoi Street, in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). It’s Saturday night, and I’m looking forward to not needing to pack and [...]

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If it’s Tuesday, this must be Sihanoukville

Cattle wander freely everywhere we’ve been in Cambodia. Mostly they are big white oxen with a small hump behind their shoulder blades, although we have seen red and brown cattle as well. Today as we drove to the coast, I saw a number of water buffalo, with their enormous crescent horns. Two of them were [...]

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Siem Reap and Angkor Wat

Yesterday and today we toured 1,000-year-old temples at Angkor — amazing stone carving and massive architecture. Our trip leader, Phalkun, pointed out that nowhere else in Southeast Asia can you find such monuments, such lasting evidence of an ancient civilization. The gigantic stones were carried by river raft from quarries 50 km away, and I [...]

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Phnom Penh photos

The Internet here is excruciatingly slow. Uploading pictures demands a lot of patience.

The Royal Palace: Architecture similar to that of Thailand; beautiful gardens.

Lunch in Phnom Penh: Green mango salad with chilis.

Waterfront, Phnom Penh.

S-21: This former school was used as a torture center by the Khmer Rouge.
More photos here. Many more to come when I return [...]

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