Since we published our first article on this portrait, a controversy has erupted online: several Thai commenters have disputed our conclusions, claiming the woman in the photograph was in fact Siamese, not Khmer. After a fresh review of every available source — the museum's own archive, genealogical research, an independent encyclopedia entry, and costume scholarship — the conclusion holds: this claim simply isn't supportable.

No need to hit the road to switch off. For one weekend, we headed to Sofitel Phnom Penh Phokeethra, a benchmark for luxury in the capital, for a family-style guest experience: spectacular décor, a cocoon of a room, an open-air pool, Do Forni pizzas and breakfast with a view. All just minutes from home.

Without clear explanations, some families give up on appeals altogether and redirect their children toward other countries. One recent case illustrates this trend all too well: a brilliant student at the René-Descartes lycée, refused by France, is now preparing his future in Australia.

Kem Monovithya, daughter of former opposition leader Kem Sokha, has been appointed special envoy to Prime Minister Samdech Thipadei Hun Manet with ministerial rank, following a royal decree signed by King Norodom Sihamoni on August 17 — a striking gesture toward Cambodia's best-known opposition family after nearly a decade of confrontation.

My name is Chenda. For ten years now, my life has largely revolved around four grey shapes living in the forests of Ratanakiri province. It isn't a job I do. It's an attachment that has, over time, shaped who I am.

A grave face, a carefully knotted sampot, a gaze that doesn't flinch from the lens. For a century and a half, this portrait taken around 1866-1870 by French photographer Émile Gsell has circulated through books, auction houses and online forums — where it has been mistaken, in turn, for a Siamese lady-in-waiting, a Vietnamese woman, or the anonymous concubine of a colonial officer. She was none of those things.

He left a career in finance for New York kitchens, before founding Hem and Her in Richmond, Virginia, and becoming the first chef-in-residence at VCU's Institute for Contemporary Art. Through his pop-ups and his signature cookies, Santana Hem, the son of Cambodian refugees, reinvents his mother's cooking and carries, dish by dish, the memory of the Khmer diaspora in the United States.

Born in Montreal to Chinese-Cambodian parents who survived the Khmer Rouge regime, Ravy Puth has turned illustration into a tool for research and resistance. Between award-winning children's books, campaigns against anti-Asian racism and a graphic novel in progress on the hidden history of Cambodians in Quebec, she works to bring back a memory the genocide tried to erase.

5.57 million international tourists visited Cambodia in 2025, down from 6.70 million the year before — the sector's first real contraction since the pandemic. The Ministry of Tourism's annual report points to a near-single cause: the collapse of overland arrivals through the Thai border, closed since June 2025 amid military tensions. Air travel, boosted by the new Techo International Airport, held up well, and domestic tourism, up sharply, cushioned the blow in provinces spar

The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) has just published a bilingual Khmer-English book devoted to the life of Queen Mother Norodom Monineath Sihanouk. Prepared for her 90th birthday, it retraces nearly a century of Cambodian history lived alongside King Father Norodom Sihanouk. Its release also revives a question that goes beyond tribute: whether her legacy, now inseparable from that of the nation, deserves legal recognition of its own.

For the fifth year running, the Forum de rentrée brings together several hundred families, newcomers and long-time residents in Phnom Penh, all looking to get informed, connect, and ease into the 2026-2027 season. Save the date: Saturday, September 12, from 9am to 2pm, in the gardens of the Institut Français du Cambodge.

Last night, the Sun & Moon Riverside Hotel in Phnom Penh played host to an evening like no other. Under traditional Khmer music, more than 500 guests — officials, entrepreneurs and friends of the cause — gathered for the 12th edition of the Airavata Foundation's gala dinner, held in support of elephant conservation in Cambodia. Between traditional dance, a live auction and an outpouring of generosity, the evening once again proved a resounding success for the foundation.

In the Phnom Penh of Cambodia's musical golden age, Meas Samon stood out in a register all his own: comic, satirical song. A notable figure on the Khmer rock and psychedelic scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was one of the few artists of his generation to make audiences laugh while slipping in a genuine critical eye on Cambodian society. His career, like that of so many musicians of the era, would be brutally cut short by the Khmer Rouge.

Grilled at a street stall, dried on a rural market table, or simmered into a sour soup, snake has long been part of the diet for some Cambodians, particularly around the Tonlé Sap. But behind this quiet culinary habit lies one of the largest wildlife harvests on the planet — and mounting pressure on a resource scientists increasingly consider unsustainable.

Born in Cambodia and raised in France from the age of three, Tomy Gousset has become one of the most endearing chefs on the Parisian food scene. At the helm of three addresses in the French capital — Tomy & Co, Hugo & Co and Marso & Co — he cultivates a generous bistronomic cuisine, built on vegetables he grows himself and on a career path that was never a straight line.

Spared for his talent as a painter, Bou Meng survived S-21 by putting brush to canvas for his own captors. A portrait of one of the last seven known adult survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime's deadliest prison.

Seven medals in Mongolia and the right to host the 2028 edition: Cambodia confirms its rising profile on the Asian ITF Taekwon-Do scene.

Tourism revenue in freefall, EuroCham raises the alarm: the European chamber of commerce urges Phnom Penh to overhaul its visa policy to revive a sector in distress.

There's a song where she owns being 31 and single, and so what? In 1960s Cambodia, that simply wasn't done. Pen Ran sang it anyway. Between psychedelic rock, cha-cha-cha and near-constant controversy, here's a look back at the meteoric career of a Cambodian singer whose disappearance under the Khmer Rouge remains, to this day, wrapped in unanswered questions.

Between baroque façades eaten away by the monsoon, a market bursting with color, and pre-Angkorian legends, Chhlong, a small town in Kratié province, still holds the memory of a vanished golden age.

From the rice paddies of the Tonlé Sap to the smoking stalls of Skun, all the way to the fine-dining tables of Siem Reap, Cambodia has cultivated a singular relationship with insects for centuries. Neither a sideshow curiosity nor a mere relic of famine, Khmer entomophagy tells a story of resilience, craft and, increasingly, science. A deep dive into a tradition that may yet help feed the future.

Régis spent twenty years bouncing between unemployment and odd jobs in the South of France. At forty-three, he lands in Cambodia and becomes, somewhere over the course of a Paris-Phnom Penh flight, an "international development strategy expert." His accent, for its part, made the trip without losing a single syllable — and has, if anything, gotten considerably thicker since.

Founder of Thaung Enterprise, Thyda Thaung discusses building a Cambodian brand around natural Kampot sea salt, the role of women in entrepreneurship, promoting Cambodian products internationally, balancing tradition with modernity, and her message to the next generation of women founders. Interview originally published in Cambodia Leadership Review — Khmer Women Voices 2026.

Somewhere on the dripping slopes of Mount Samkos, in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains, a flower pushes up through the leaf litter with no stem to announce it. It has no leaves, no visible roots, no chlorophyll. It lives for only a few days, grows nowhere else on Earth, and for more than sixty years the scientific world believed it had vanished. This is the story of Sapria poilanei, one of Cambodia's rarest and least-known plants.