Slavery at Sea: A story of human trafficking in drawings by a survivor
Prum Vannak is a Cambodian survivor of human trafficking. His story is one of extreme poverty and of what people are sometimes forced to do in order to take care of their families. It’s also a story of gross neglect to supervise human rights violations by authorities. Many trafficking victims don’t live to tell their [...]
Old maps of Siam and surrounding countries
I love maps, specially old maps since they often tell a lot about history. As I found out, it’s quite hard to get any decent old maps of Siam and neighbouring countries. Usually they are for sale only. I guess family of mr. van der Aa who made both maps in the early 18th century, [...]
Siem Reap is getting upmarket
Photo: Miss Avan, waitress in the popular Khmer owned Temple Club bar and restaurant. Slowly but steadily Cambodia is recovering from apocalyptic times. Besides NGO workers, in the late 80′s and early 90′s it was a place for adventurers, followed by backpackers in the last decade. One of the musts for Cambodia goers is to visit the famous temples [...]
Culture & history vs Action: 0-1
Is the atractiveness of the temples of Angkor in decline? Covering at least 1000 square kilometer (390 sq mi), Angkor was by far the largest preindustrial city known to man. The sheer size and beauty of what is left of Angkor’s estimated 1000+ temples at the city’s core have puzzled foreign travelers as far back as the 16th century. [...]
Crocodile burger
Seen at the Banana Leaf restaurant & pub in Pub street, Siem Reap, Cambodia: I didn’t try the burger, but crocodile meat tastes somewhat between chicken and fish, not my thing really.
To obey or not to obey, that’s the question
Today I read a moving story titled ‘In North Korea, a brutal coice‘. It is about a woman called Han who escaped from the country with her two daughters to China and was finally permitted to live in the US. Along the way she faced the cruel choice of leaving her 5 years old son [...]
Lam wong dance and hired partners: Little known S-E Asian folklore
Lam wong is originally a Khmer and Laotion tradition where male and female or female couples dance around in circles.In Thailand during luk thung style festivals, lam wong was once was a popular pastime.People didn’t have a suitable dance partner hired one.Nowadays in Thailand this tradition is hard to find and has almost been forgotton.In [...]
Siem Reap central market
Seen in Siem Reap from our balcony: At night, the centre is a busy place with numerous food stalls, some open till 4:00 am In the morning at 8:00 am everything is perfectly clean, since the square and the pink building on the right co-function as a primary school. In the afternoon, after the school [...]
The moral of the Three Little Pigs doesn’t always apply..
Today we joined a friend visiting her parents mr. and mrs. Yib in Bang Ntort 30 km’s from Siem Reap. The last 2 km’s was a bumby sand-road and we had grab on to anything in the tuk-tuk in order not to be ejected from the vehicle.We brought food and Polly helped to prepare it with [...]
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