Vice Chairperson of Canadia Group and CEO of Intercare Hospital, Oknha Dr. Carolyne Pung discusses the rise of Khmer women in leadership, the development of Cambodia's private healthcare sector, raising awareness around women's health, and balancing long-term vision with the day-to-day management of large projects. Interview originally published in Cambodia Leadership Review — Khmer Women Voices 2026.

Angkor has its temples, Sihanoukville its beaches, and Cambodia, every year, its parade of visitors from Europe. They don't all look alike. An attempt at classification, with no scientific pretensions, drawn from patient observation in the markets, in tuk-tuks, and by the poolside.

“Losing my husband is the greatest wound of my life. He was not only a good husband, but also the head of our family and a strong pillar for our children.” Mrs. Oum Saroeuy, 49, still lives in Koul Village, Popel Commune, Soutr Nikom District, Siem Reap Province. She is the wife of Lieutenant Colonel Uong Vibol, the heroic soldier who fell on the battlefield of Ta Krabey Temple on December 9, 2025. This is the story she shared with us.

As Phnom Penh steps up its fight against online scam centres, a shadow economy that had come to shape coastal towns, real estate and local employment, the country is going through a delicate macroeconomic adjustment. Between international pressure, regional shocks and a stated commitment to clean up the sector, Cambodge Mag tries to untangle what this transition is really costing — and who is paying for it.

There is a new creature at the vernissage, and it has evolved with alarming speed. It wears linen the way a hermit crab wears a shell — for protection, and because it looks fantastic in photos.

Long before Jayavarman II proclaimed Cambodia's independence on Mount Kulen in 802 and laid the first stone of the Khmer Empire, the Mekong Delta and surrounding plains had already given rise to powerful kingdoms, largely forgotten by the general public today. Funan, then Chenla, spent nearly seven centuries shaping the political, religious, and commercial foundations on which Angkor would later rise.

Born in 1944 in Battambang province under the name Pol Sarann, Mao Sareth grew up in a family of musicians. In an interview she once gave to journalist and singer Huoy Meas, she mentioned having three sisters and coming from a household where music held a central place.

An international relations student at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, passionate about Japan since middle school and a walker of the Shikoku pilgrimage, Cassandre Mariotto came to Cambodia for her final internship at Mintha Care, where she led the company’s CSR projects. Between discovering the country, gaining self-confidence, and a clear-eyed look at inequality, she talks to Cambodge Mag about this Cambodian chapter of her journey.

Far from restaurant tables and dishes reserved for special occasions, one soup captures Cambodian home cooking at its most everyday. Samlor machu trey, a sour-and-savoury fish soup, is made across the country using whatever the day's market has to offer.

Long before imported creams and Phnom Penh's crowded cosmetics aisles, there was the garden, the market and the kitchen. Turmeric, lemongrass, tamarind, kaffir lime leaves: Cambodian women have drawn for generations on a pantry of local plants to protect their skin from the tropical climate. A look at a few Khmer beauty recipes — simple, natural, and still very much in use today.

Born in Battambang, exiled as a child, she returned as an adult to inhabit memory — Anida Yoeu Ali transforms displacement into creature, performance, colour. A portrait of one of the most visible artists of the Cambodian diaspora today.

Facing French Ambassador Olivier Richard, who had just outlined his reading of the Franco-Cambodian year, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, His Excellency Prak Sokhonn, replied at the French Embassy in Phnom Penh with a resolutely Cambodian reading of that same 2026: that of a partnership the Kingdom intends to see grow, all the way to the rank of strategic partnership.

For his first Bastille Day reception in Cambodia, French Ambassador Olivier Richard chose to look far ahead. Before an audience of ministers, diplomats and members of the French community, he laid out, on Monday evening, the picture of a 2026 unlike any other, one in which “we have the chance to write a new page” in the history of relations between Paris and Phnom Penh.

For one weekend, Sara and Cindy swapped the bustle of Phnom Penh for the calm of Templation, about ten minutes from downtown Siem Reap. On the agenda: one night in a pool villa, another in the famous Jungloo, surrounded by beautiful exotic greenery. Here's what they thought.

A new global index highlights Cambodia's contrast between an easy, affordable retirement and a still-young business climate — a contrast that recent economic data largely tempers

An internationally renowned radiologist turned historian of medicine, and later a public servant, Dr Chhem Kieth Rethy embodies an unusual trajectory: that of a child of Phnom Penh who became a professor on four continents before returning to put his knowledge at the service of Cambodia, from radiology wards to the forgotten hospitals of Jayavarman VII.

Every year, between the retreat of the low waters and the rise of the monsoon, the sandbars bristling at the confluence of the Mekong, the Sekong, the Sesan and the Srepok rivers become covered with a dense, dark population: cormorants. In early July, a new set of images published by the Stung Treng documentation center, devoted to the seasonal migration of these birds in Borei O'Svay Sen Chey district, served as a reminder of the quiet but vital importance of this Ramsar sit

From a refugee camp on the Thai border to the sets of John Wick and The Expendables, Nop Daren's story reads like a script he could have stunted himself. This French-born performer of Cambodian descent, trained in the shadow of some of the biggest names in the business, now carries the colours of Cambodia into some of the most spectacular productions in the world of action cinema.

Twelve fellows at the Cambodian think tank Future Forum have published a collection of concrete policy proposals, ranging from tax reform to urban design to the invisible work of care. A rare exercise in policymaking conceived by, and for, the country's youth.

What remains after more than half a century spent building? Bruno D'Arcangues, General Director of Artelia Cambodia, an international engineering and project management firm in Cambodia, looks back on a career where technical skill meets management. From a childhood split between France, Algeria, and Morocco to his projects across Asia, a portrait emerges of a builder as demanding as he is imperfect.

Having moved to Cambodia in 2015 in search of her Khmer roots, Jannine Sem has built her career on two pillars: data and people. Today Head of People & Culture at SBI APAC and a Board Member of La French Tech Phnom Penh, she describes herself as a bridge-builder between French startups and the local ecosystem. She spoke to Cambodge Mag about her journey — an unconventional career path and a deep attachment to the country she has chosen to call home.

Sitting on Cambodia's only land border with Laos, at the confluence of three rivers, the small provincial capital of Stung Treng has never made it onto a single Cambodian postcard. That may be exactly why it deserves a stop.

East of the Mekong, in the red hills of Mondulkiri, lives Cambodia's largest indigenous community. The Bunong never had a “spa-ready” medicine to sell to tourists — they have a survival pharmacopoeia, passed down in a low voice, one that scientific research is only now beginning to touch.

Battambang, late 1960s. Chantha Nguon is a pampered child in a comfortable family, the kind where meals are plentiful and the future feels like a given. Her father is Khmer, her mother half-Vietnamese — a detail that means nothing yet. It soon will, and it will matter enormously.