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.

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.

Sabine preaches happy simplicity to 47,000 followers from her lovely condo with shared pool. She has a cleaning lady and only ever travels by air-conditioned taxi. She calls it "living with less."

Senior Associate at Tilleke & Gibbins Cambodia, certified arbitrator and mediator, and Vice-President of the Association Franco-Cambodgienne des Avocats et Juristes (AFCAJ), Nitikar Nith looks back on her journey as a Cambodian lawyer, the rise of women in the legal profession, the importance of legal education, and her message to young Cambodian professionals. Interview originally published in Cambodia Leadership Review — Khmer Women Voices 2026.

In the forests of Ratanakiri, an age-old gesture repeats itself, generation after generation: notching the trunk of a canopy giant to collect its fragrant sap. Caught between village subsistence, customary knowledge and mounting pressure from land concessions, the resin of Dipterocarpus — long known locally by its older spelling, Dichterocarpus — tells the story of an increasingly fragile balance between the mountain peoples and the forest that feeds them.

From Kyoto to Boeung Keng Kang, ceremonial Japanese green tea powder has taken over Phnom Penh's trendiest cafés in just a few seasons.

CEO of Primalis Corporation and Vice Chairwoman of the Cambodia Rice Federation, Lynda Him discusses the role of women in Cambodia's agricultural sector, building the "Brand Cambodia" story, creating added value through exports, leadership in a competitive global industry, and her message to the next generation of Cambodian women leaders. Interview originally published in Cambodia Leadership Review — Khmer Women Voices 2026.

Brandon booked his flight on a Thursday night, somewhere between his second glass of white wine and a documentary about street children in Phnom Penh. By Friday morning he'd already ordered the polo shirt. Eight days later he comes home changed for life — just not quite the way he thinks.

November 1911. A steamship, the Armand-Béhic, glides up the brown waters of the Saigon River and docks in the sticky heat of the coming dry season. Down the gangway steps a thirty-nine-year-old man, a lawyer by training and a journalist by temperament, arriving to take charge of one of the largest and most coveted territories in the French colonial empire. His name is Albert Sarraut.