Kratié Province

History

The area near Kratié along the Mekong River was one of the most densely populated regions of pre-Angkorian Cambodia.[2]
Lon Nol was the province's governor in 1945.[3]
During foreign incursions into Cambodia and the civil wars, Kratié saw especially heavy fighting.[4] During Operation Menu, Kratié was heavily bombed by the United States.[4][5] Recovering unexploded ordnance and de-mining has been a major recent initiative.[4]
On December 30, 1978, Vietnamese forces captured Kratié.[6] Civil war continued in Kratie after the defeat of Pol Pot.[5]

Geography

The Mekong River flows from the north to the south of the province; approximately 140 km of the river is located in Kratié.[7] The river is home to Irrawaddy dolphins, fishes, and birds.[7] The flow of the Mekong River at Kratié town varies greatly.[8][9] There are hundreds of seasonally flooded islands in the river.[7][10] As of 2007, the Cambodian government planned to build a dam on the Mekong River near Kratié town.[11] The province also contains many forests, the Phnom Pram Poan mountain range, Phnom Prech, and rubber plantations.[7] Eastern Kratié is an important bird area.[12]
The province is mostly covered in dense forest.[13] Craters from Operation Menu bombings during the Vietnam War, some of which are filled with water, are still visible in the countryside.[13] Some land in Kratié is used for agriculture, though a smaller percentage than elsewhere in Cambodia.[13]
The province has a monsoonal climate, with a cool season from November to March, a hot season from March to May, and a rainy season from May to October.[14] Flooding is frequent in Kratié; the Mekong may overflow by as much as 4 m during the rainy season.[15]
Kratié is known for its attractive riverside scenery and its green villages and paddies.[16]
Kratié's fisheries are part of the Upper Mekong River Zone, which is important support for migratory species and subsistence fishing but does not play a major role in commercial fishing.[17]
Forests in Kratié tend to be open and less dense than elsewhere in Cambodia; they are generally made up of deciduous trees that lose their

Government

Kham Phoeun is the governor of Kratié Province.[18] Venn Sokhoy is the deputy governor.[10] In the 2007 commune council elections, the vast majority of seats went to members of the Cambodian People's Party.[19] Women make up 17.4% of commune council members.[20] In 2005, Kratié received 1.69 billion riel from the commune/sangkat fund, of which development funds were 1.20 billion riel and funds for administration were 0.49 billion riel.[21]

Economy and transportation

Most Kratié residents are subsistence farmers or fishers.[22] 78% of residents are employed in agriculture.[23] Thirty percent of Kratié households live on less than US$1 per day; the province's poverty rate of 32% is somewhat lower than the national average of 39%.[24][22] Some gold mining occurs in Kratié.[25][26] Most soil in Kratié is poor; the province primarily grows perennial industrial crops like rubber.[27] Illegal logging supervised by provincial officials is a problem.[28] Kratié has the potential to be an ecotourism destination.[29] Kratié's road system is poorly developed.[22] As of 1998, the average household possessed 0.48 hectares of agricultural land, and 37% were landless.[23]

Social issues

Land concessions often cover land customarily owned or used by people in Kratié Province.[30][31] In 2004, community land organizers were threatened by the military after they confiscated chainsaws used for illegal logging.[32] An indigenous people's organization is active in Kratié Province.[33]

Health, education, and development

Schistosomiasis is a problem in Kratié province.[34] The incidence of malaria and dengue fever rose sharply in the mid-2000s; this increase has been attributed to changes in climate.[35]
Malaria is hyperendemic in Kratié's forests.[22] The provincial infant mortality rate of 97/1,000 and child mortality rate of 80/1,000 are significantly higher than the national average (68/1,000 and 53/1,000, respectively).[22]

Demography

There is a substantial Vietnamese minority in Kratié Province.[36] Kratié is home to seven indigenous groups: Phnorng, Kouy, Mil, Khonh, Kraol, Steang, and Thamoun.[7][37] Approximately 70% of the province's residents live along the Mekong River;[7] the area beyond the river is sparsely populated.[38] Approximately 8% of Kratié's population is indigenous; it is one of four provinces with a substantial indigenous population.[37] 70% of the population is rural.[23]

Mondulkiri Province

Minorities/Hill Tribes of Mondulkiri

80 percent of the Mondulkiri's population is made up of ten tribal minorities, with the majority of them being Phnong. The remaining 20 percent are Khmer, Chinese and Muslim Cham. The population lives off the land, planting rice, fruit trees and a variety of vegetables. Others grow strawberries, coffee, rubber and cashew nuts. Although more and more houses are built in 'Khmer style', you still can find the traditional Phnong houses. In the houses you'll find big jars, which are said to be more than a thousand years old, and traditional gongs. There are various sorts of gongs used at different occasions. Jars and gongs are among the most valuable possessions of indigenous communities both in traditional and spiritual as well as material terms. During the times of Pol Pot those objects were buried in hidden places in the jungle and in many cases they still wait in the ground

Waterfalls

Many majestic waterfalls are found in Mondulkiri.

Bou Sra Waterfall
Located at Pich Chinda District, 43 kilometers from Senmonorom town, Bou Sra is the largest waterfall, made famous by a popular Khmer song in Mondulkiri and has two stages.
Senmonorom Waterfall
5 km from town and an easy walk, is not much to look at and used to be a nice picnic spot until the Japanese built a hydro electric power station there and stole all the water.
Romnea Waterfall
10 kilometers from Senmonorom, is actually 1 of 3 large waterfalls that has now been deforested and privatised by a Guesthouse.

Villages

Pou Lung, 10 km (15min) from Senmonorom
Pou Trou, 20 km (1hour) from Senmonorom
Pou Tang, 8 km (30min) from Senmonorom

Land grabbing

The province is subdivided into 5 districts, which are further subdivided into 21 communes and 98 villages.
1101 Kaev Seima
1102 Kaoh Nheaek
1103 Ou Reang
1104 Pechr Chenda
1105 Senmonorom

Siem Reap

Siem Reap City is the capital of Siem Reap Province, Cambodia.
Siem Reap has colonial and Chinese-style architecture in the Old French Quarter, and around the Old Market. In town, there are Apsara dance performances, craft shops, silk farms, rice-paddy countryside, fishing villages and a bird sanctuary near the Tonle Sap Lake. It is perhaps best known for its proximity to Angkor Wat.
Siem Reap today, being a popular tourist destination, has a large number of hotels and restaurants. Most smaller establishments are concentrated around the Old Market area, while more expensive hotels are located between Siem Reap-Angkor International Airport and the town along National Road 6. There are a variety of mid-range hotels and restaurants along Sivatha, and budget to mid-range hotels in the Phsar Leu area.

History

The name Siem Reap means the 'Defeat of Siam' —today’s Thailand —and refers to a centuries-old bloodbath, commemorated in stone in the celebrated bas relief carvings of the monuments.
In 1901 the École Française d'Extrême Orient (EFEO) began a long association with Angkor by funding an expedition to the Bayon. In 1907 Angkor, which had been under Thai control, was returned to Cambodia and the EFEO took responsibility for clearing and restoring the whole site. In the same year, the first tourists arrived in Angkor - an unprecedented 200 of them in three months. Angkor had been 'rescued' from the jungle and was assuming its place in the modern world.
Siem Reap was little more than a village when the first French explorers re-discovered Angkor in the 19th century. With the return of Angkor to Cambodian, or French, control in 1907, Siem Reap began to grow, absorbing the first wave of tourists. The Grand Hotel d'Angkor opened its doors in 1929 and the temples of Angkor remained one of Asia's leading draws until the late 1960s, luring visitors like Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Kennedy. In 1975, the population of Siem Reap, along with that of the rest of the cities and towns in Cambodia, was evacuated by the communist Khmer Rouge and driven into the countryside.

As with the rest of the country, Siem Reap's history (and the memories of its people) is coloured by spectre of the brutal Khmer Rouge Regime, though since Pol Pot's death in 1998, relative stability and a rejuvenated tourist industry have been important steps in an important, if tentative, journey forward to recovery. With the advent of war, Siem Reap entered a long slumber from which it only began to awake in the mid-1990s.
Today, Siem Reap is undoubtedly Cambodia's fastest growing city and serves as a small charming gateway town to the world famous heritage of the Angkor temples. Thanks to those attractions, Siem Reap has transformed itself into a major tourist hub. Siem Reap nowadays is a vibrant town with modern hotels and architectures. Despite international influences, Siem Reap and its people have conserved much of the town's image, culture and traditions.

The Wat and the river

The town is a cluster of small villages along the Siem Reap River. These villages were originally developed around Buddhist pagodas (Wat) which are almost evenly spaced along the river from Wat Preah En Kau Sei in the north to Wat Phnom Krom in the south, where the Siem Reap River meets the great Tonle Sap Lake.
The main town is concentrated around Sivutha Street and the Psar Chas area (Old Market area) where there are old colonial buildings, shopping and commercial districts. The Wat Bo area is now full of guesthouses and restaurants while the Psar Leu area is often crowded with jewellery and handicraft shops, selling from ruby to woodcarving. Other fast developing areas are the airport road and main road to Angkor where a number of large hotels and resorts can be found.

Economy

Businesses centered around tourism have flourished thanks to the tourism boom. There are a wide range of hotels, ranging from several 5-star hotels and chic resorts to hundreds of budget guesthouses. A large selection of restaurants offer many kinds of food, including Italian, Indian, French, German, Russian, Thai, Korean, Japanese, and Burmese. Plenty of shopping opportunities exist around the Psar Chas area while the nightlife is often vibrant with a number of western-styled pubs and bars.
Siem Reap-Angkor International Airport in Siem Reap now serves the most tourist passengers to Cambodia. Most tourists come to Siem Reap to visit the Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, (about 6Km north of the city), and other Angkor ruins. While those are still the main attractions, there are plenty of other things to experience, such as a dinner with an Apsara Dance performance, a trip to fishing villages and bird sanctuary, a visit to a craft workshop and silk farm, or a bicycle tour around the rice paddies in the countryside.
The Gecko Environment Center is a floating environment center located in the province of Siem Reap on the Tonle Sap Lake. The goal of the center is to promote environmental awareness among the local community as well as visitors to the great lake.[1] The province of Siem Reap is part of the Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve.

Prey Veng Province

Land area

The total land area of the province is 4,883 km², which equals 2.7% of the total land area of Cambodia (181,035 km²). This consists of 445.18 km² or 9.12% of human settlements, 3,100 km² or 63.49% of agricultural land use, 194.61 km² or 3.99% of forested area, 1,082.86 km² or 22.18% of public land, infrastructure and water bodies. The remaining 60.35 km² or 1.24 % are unused areas.

Population

The total population is 947,357 persons or 7.07% of the total population of 13,388,910 persons in Cambodia [2] In the above number are also consisting of 825,818 person or 80.54% are farmers, 140,685 person or 13.72% are fishermen, 44,561 person or 4,35% are traders, 14,267 person or 1.39% are government’s officers.
The average density 194.0 person per km².

Stung Treng

In Cambodia's northeast, Stung Treng offers little more than access to other places. Clockwise from the north, Stung Treng is bordered by Laos, Ratanakiri, Mondulkiri, Kratie, Kompong Thom, and Preah Vihear.
Access is by road south to Kratie and east to Banlung and by boat to the Laos border. A road to the border is a work in progress. There is now bus service from Phnom Penh.
I rode a motorbike from Banlung and back in January 2002 and that's about the extent of my Stung Treng experience. You can read about it here.
The town itself sits high on the banks of the San River with the Mekong right around the corner. There are a couple of nondescript restaurants and hotels if you need one. If you are overlanding it to or from Laos you'll have to pass through here. Some first-hand travelers' reports are here: cambodia-overland-laos-reports
The other place Stung Treng offers access to is overland to Banlung. Road condition is variable year to year.
There is one interesting thing you can do here, and that's take a boat trip, a serious boat trip, all the way to Ratanakiri if you so choose. Such a trip won't come cheap, but I know people have done it. I don't know anyone in particular who offers the service, but I imagine some determined inquiries in Stung Treng would ultimately yield results.

Pursat Province

Veal Veang District

Veal Veang shares a border with Battambang Province to the north, Thailand to the west, Koh Kong Province to the south and the Pursat districts of Phnum Kravanh and Bakan to the east. The northern end of the Cardamom Mountains cover the eastern edge of Veal Veang to the Thai border.[2] According to the 1998 Census, Veal Veang district is made up of 5 communes and 20 villages.[3] However, the population of the district was not enumerated in the census due to security concerns. [4] From 1979 until the end of the 1990's, Veal Veang was one of the last remaining strongholds of the Khmer Rouge.
The legacy of the Cambodian civil war and over 30 years of Khmer Rouge occupation has left many parts of the district heavily contaminated with landmines.[5] As mines are cleared and roads improved, logging both legal and illegal threatens the remaining forested areas. Veal Veang is also home to around 300 families of the few remaining ethnic minority Pear people.[6]
Sampov Meas District

Sampov Meas is located in the center of the most populated part of the province. The district is completely surrounded by other districts and is the only district in Pursat that shares no border with another province. North of Sampov Meas lies Kandieng district, while Bakan forms the northeastern and eastern borders. Phnum Kravanh is to the south and Krakor forms the western boundary along National Highway Number Five.[2] This is the smallest district in Pursat province by land area and has the highest population density.
The Pursat River, which begins in the Northern Cardamoms, flows through the center of the district at Pursat town on its way to the Tonle Sap. There are small parks alongside the river where urban residents of Sampov Meas often come to sit in the cool of the evening.

Phnum Kravanh District

Phnum Kravanh shares a border with Veal Veang district to the west and Koh Kong, Kampong Speu and Kampong Chhnang provinces to the south. Bakan and Sampov Meas districts are to the north and Krakor district is on the north eastern boundary.[2] Previously Phnum Kravanh was much larger and stretched to the Thai border. However, in 1997 the western part of the district was taken to form the new district of Veal Veang.
The southern part of the district is largely unpopulated and has few roads. It forms a major part of the Central Cardamom range. According to the 1998 Census, Phnum Kravanh district is made up of 7 communes and 55 villages. The population of the district was 54,136 in 10,390 households at the time of the census.[3]

Svay Rieng Province

Went into the field for the first time two weeks ago. Drove 3 hours down to Svay Rieng province. Drive was mostly uneventful, though was interrupted by a 20-minute wait to cross a big river. One would normally expect a bridge to get us across the river, but for some reason, this was all done by car ferry. The number of vendors knocking on the windows to try to sell us stuff while we waited was astounding. Sopheak bought a pommelo (huge grapefruit), which was absolutely fantastic, and Savath some corn (much less so—way overdone), but nobody ventured far enough to buy the fried crickets.

We arrived in Svay Rieng city (the provincial capital of Svay Rieng province), which was far from overwhelming, around noon and checked into our 5-star hotel which was more like a ½-star hotel. I definitely miss the IDEO expense budgets. . . I’ll post my user research report next weekend in which I’ll go through all the detail of what we saw, but for now. . . talked with a number of villagers (dry and wet latrine users & non-users), masons, ring producers and retailers. We had two groups of us out in the field in parallel, so we covered a lot of ground in three days—15 interviews plus transit time back and forth from Phnom Penh. . . was a bit of data overload.
Participant recruiting (normally the bane of any researcher) is remarkably simple here. We just walk around the villages until we see someone with a latrine that looks interesting then go up to their house and ask if they want to talk. Everyone spends 98% of their time outside, so they’re easy to find. And everyone has been ridiculously generous with their time, very open to talking about defecation (something with a pretty strong taboo back west) and really funny and enjoyable to interact with. Physically, the people are amazingly beautiful and have great character, especially the elderly and the children. My photography doesn’t do them great justice, but here are some of the people we met:

The interviews mostly last an hour and are almost completely out of my hands. They happen all in Khmer and for every 5 minutes of talking, I get about 30 seconds of translation. I’m not getting a lot of the nuance, but I am getting something. I’m counting on the rest of the team to bring out the nuanced insights during the discussions this week.