Roasting and Steaming in Cambodia: Traditional Health Practices for Pregnant Women

By: Gabrielle Yetter

When Chan Moniroth delivered her first child this July, she wasn’t able to wash her hair for a month after the birth. She also had to inhale herbal vapors every day and was instructed by elderly female relatives to avoid the use of computers and televisions.

During her pregnancy, she was cautioned not to eat spicy foods, not to raise her hands above her head and not to take a bath in the evenings.

Such are traditional health practices in Cambodia among pregnant women where old wives tales are often more the norm than modern medical techniques and upward of 60% of the population practices traditional healing methods according to the National Centre of Traditional Medicine in Phnom Penh.

While younger women with university educations and modern urban lifestyles are slowly moving away from some of these traditions, they are finding it harder to break away from family pressures when it comes to starting a family of their own.

Budget Friendly Phnom Penh Accomodation

By: Abigail Gilbert

The days of the $2 room for hardy travellers are gone, but it's possible to balance budget and comfort for a memorable stay in Phnom Penh. Hidden boutique hotels, swimming pools and garden locations that don't break the bank? Read on for our recommendations for cheap and mid-range guesthouses and hotels in Phnom Penh.

Backpacker friendly

Long Lin House is actually in four locations close by each other on St 19 and St 172. The staff are very friendly, helpful and amusing, with excellent English. The best rooms come with a private balcony, usually unheard of in this price range, along with little touches like free drinking water, wifi and toiletries. A basic fan room with TV and shared bathroom is $7 a night, rising to $15 for a private bathroom with hot shower, air con and balcony. Centrally located within 10 minutes walk of the riverside, National Museum and Central Market, enjoy the real life of Phnom Penh going on outside your door.

#159, Street 19, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Tel: 855 (0)23 99 24 12

From the Chalkboard to the Blackboard: Project Buckhunger Feeds Street Kids in Cambodia

By: Gabi Yetter

Not long ago, Johnny Phillips spent his days cooking lobster risotto and filet mignon for well-heeled patrons of his upscale restaurants.

Today, Johnny has a different kind of customer – tiny, barefoot children from the streets of Phnom Penh who come to his location for a plate of food to keep them from hunting in the garbage.

At 11am every day the gates to Buckhunger swing open and a steady stream of small patrons filter in, wash their hands and take a seat at a shiny metal table on a blue plastic chair. A group of Cambodian twenty-somethings serve their meals, sweep the floors and clear away their dishes – using the skills they learned from this former restaurateur.

“I train them so they can work in a restaurant after being here,” said Johnny. “The customers at Buckhunger may be little children, but they are waited upon as though they are regular patrons.”

From Zwolle to Phnom Penh – Ramon Flicks the Switch in Cambodia

By: Gabi Yetter

When people come to Cambodia, they usually take a while to settle in.

Not Ramon Stoppelenburg.

Ramon arrived in Phnom Penh last September, found a place to live in three days and within six months was the new owner of the city’s only movie house.

This may not sound like a great feat but Ramon took a slightly different path to most. He did it with no money.

As the king of networking, he flung out the net, built it – and they came. That’s how he does things. His global escapades began in 2001 when he launched the website LetMeStayForADay.com asking people to invite him to their homes from his base in Amsterdam. The concept flickered and caught fire and Ramon received 3,577 invitations from 77 countries. So he hit the road for 26 months, staying with strangers who soon became friends.

Cambodia’s Elusive Justice: How the Khmer Rouge Tribunal Finds Itself in a Loaded Minefield

By: Olesia Plokhii

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia—Like those lush green pastures with roaming cows and floating pink water lilies in rural Cambodia, where children still lose limbs every year by taking just one wrong step, this little country’s road to justice has been marred by mine bombs. Those judicial bombs have exploded almost annually since the inception in 2003 of a United Nations-backed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal mandated to hold accountable the architects of one of the deadliest political and military regimes of the 20^th century.

But unlike the victims of unexploded ordnances left behind by 20 years of war either by American, Vietnamese or Khmer Rouge forces and lurking between tall rice paddy and zigzagging crocodiles, the victims of these blasts are still nursing old wounds.

In Cambodia, anyone roughly older than 43 years old, making them 7 at the time of the “liberation” of Phnom Penh in April 1975 by young, stoic guerillas dressed in black calling themselves the “Red Khmers,” remembers the military dictatorship. If they weren’t part of the at least 2 million people who died of torture, executions or starvation while laboring in the countryside as part of the government’s “year zero” agrarian policy, they know someone who did. And though many would rather forget, others want justice.

A Chocoholic Dream in Phnom Penh

By: Gabi Yetter

Before arriving in Phnom Penh, I spent a lot of time reading about the customs, history and, most importantly, the food of Cambodia.

I knew about fried eggs on top of dishes, read about durian, dragon fruit and longan and had been warned about prohok, crickets and tarantulas.

But nobody ever mentioned Belgian chocolate.

There was nowhere that told me that, on Street 240 in Phnom Penh, I’d find a selection of incredible delights in the shape of pralines, truffles and mendiants – rich, sumptuous bites of milk, dark and white chocolate wrapped around luscious fillings of armagnac, raspberry, caramel and crème de cacao – pure and delicious Belgian chocolate with 73% cacao content from South-American cacao beans. It’s a chocoholic’s dream come true.