Long after we’ve returned home from our holiday, perhaps even after our memories of a trip begin to fade, our homes may be decorated by a selection of souvenirs we gathered from our travels around the world. Many are tied to memories of a small artisanal village in the mountains or a local friend’s relative who specializes in making cultural curios. These souvenirs can be some of the most special experiences of travel: meeting local people and bringing home a small piece of their culture. Today we’re going to speak to a man helping preserve such traditions and make them available to visitors to Cambodia.
Continue readingOn this episode of Talk Travel Asia Podcast, Scott and Trevor discuss how best to spend Three Nights in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Siem Reap is home to one of the world’s truly most magnificent sites, the temples of the Angkor era. Not just one temple, rather hundreds, you must see and experience them if you’re a true traveler of Asia. But in addition to the temples, the surrounding landscape is beautiful, the largest freshwater lake in SE Asia, the Tonle Sap is on its edge, there’s great hiking, mountain biking, fantastic hotels in all budgets, and an array of restaurants. So today we’re going to dive in and share how we like to spend 3 Nights in Siem Reap.
Our guest today is a travel writing legend. Joe Cummings has been living and working in Southeast Asia for decades. He’s authored scores of travel guidebooks and a host of specialty-focus books on everything from Buddhist Stupas in Asia to traditional Thai tattoos. He’s perhaps best known for being the original Lonely Planet Thailand guidebook writer. He is also an accomplished guitar player and all around nice guy. If you’re looking for someone who knows a ton about Southeast Asia – Joe Cummings is your man.
For Episode 59 we’re running an encore episode from the early days of the show, Episode 12: Phare, The Cambodian Circus with Craig Dodge. For those heading to Cambodia, this is one of the top cultural attractions; for those interested in grass-roots social enterprises, this is a wonderful story. Have a listen and learn about this troupe of performers consisting of disadvantaged Cambodian children.
On this episode of Talk Travel Asia podcast, we talk with Chomwan Weeraworawit about the rich textile history and diversity across the region and how you can experience it.
Scott explains that Thailand is one of the world’s most popular travel destinations. It consistently ranks high in magazine and traveler’s polls, and its capital Bangkok is regularly rated as the top city in the world for tourists, often beating out better known international capitals such as Paris and London. Scott asks, “What makes Thailand such a magical and popular travel destination?” and proposes that they discuss that today.
