Standing between the old and the modern, between the village and the world, a stretch of land on the outskirts of Phnom Penh has carried a whole share of Cambodian identity for nearly a century. Pochentong Airport was never a mere transit point: from its very conception, it was a political and symbolic project, driven by King Father Norodom Sihanouk's vision of an independent, modern Cambodia open to the world.

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.

Beneath the stalactites of Laang Spean, in Battambang province, archaeologists have spent more than sixty years digging through a memory that stretches back several millennia. What the earth reveals there upends the idea of a fixed Khmer identity: Cambodia's first inhabitants did not all spring from the same soil. They arrived in successive waves, from the forests of Sundaland, the rice fields of southern China, and eventually the shores of India.

Behind every diplomatic reception lies a well-oiled process combining protocol, bilateral relationships and last-minute trade-offs.

EV registrations jumped 151% in the first half of 2026, a surge driven largely by the war in the Middle East and a determined government policy. Chinese, Japanese, Korean and American carmakers are now racing to set up assembly lines in the Kingdom.

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.