Qualla: Kampong Thom https://qualla.com/kampong-thom en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:39:17 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Kampong Thom https://qualla.com/kampong-thom Kampong Thom: Introduction https://qualla.com/kampong-thom/ Half an hour before sunset, the mahogany trees behind the Old Governor's Residence begin to complain. The noise builds slowly — a rising static of squabbling, of leathery wings unfolding and refolding — until the fruit bats spill out of the branches in a ragged column and stream across the Stung Sen River toward the rice fields. Almost nobody is watching. Kampong Thom sits at very nearly the exact midpoint of National Highway 6 between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, and the buses that stop here stop for twenty minutes. Passengers buy fried bananas, find the toilet, and climb back aboard. The town is a comma in someone else's sentence.

Read more: Kampong Thom on Qualla

]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/6/6/8/kampong-thom-wk/w668-kampong-thom-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Kampong Thom: The Twenty-Minute Town https://qualla.com/kampong-thom/ Everything in Kampong Thom orients itself around the highway and the river, and where those two cross, the town does its business. The Arunras hotel and guesthouse function as the unofficial bus terminal — Mekong Express tickets are sold at the front desk, moto-dop drivers idle o...

Read more: Kampong Thom on Qualla

]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/6/6/8/kampong-thom-wk/w668-kampong-thom-the-twenty-minute-town.mp3 0:06 2 full Kampong Thom: The Governor's Empty House https://qualla.com/kampong-thom/ Six hundred metres west of the main bridge, on the southern bank of the Stung Sen, stands a French colonial villa that the province has never quite decided what to do with. The furnishings are long gone. A few bathroom fixtures survive, stranded in rooms that no longer have any o...

Read more: Kampong Thom on Qualla

]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/6/6/8/kampong-thom-wk/w668-kampong-thom-the-governors-empty-house.mp3 0:06 3 full Kampong Thom: Grasslands Birders Cross the World For https://qualla.com/kampong-thom/ The seasonally flooded grasslands and rice fields ringing Kampong Thom look, to an untrained eye, like nothing at all: flat, brown for half the year, unremarkable. They are among the most important bird habitats in Southeast Asia. This is core range for the Bengal florican, a bus...

Read more: Kampong Thom on Qualla

]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/6/6/8/kampong-thom-wk/w668-kampong-thom-grasslands-birders-cross-the-world-for.mp3 0:06 4 full Kampong Thom: Before Angkor, There Was Isanapura https://qualla.com/kampong-thom/ An hour by tuk-tuk through villages and rice paddies brings you to Sambor Prei Kuk, and it is worth understanding what you are looking at before you arrive. This was Isanapura, the royal capital established by King Isanavarman I of Chenla, who reigned from roughly 616 to 637 — tw...

Read more: Kampong Thom on Qualla

]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/6/6/8/kampong-thom-wk/w668-kampong-thom-before-angkor-there-was-isanapura.mp3 0:06 5 full Kampong Thom: Downriver and Off the Map https://qualla.com/kampong-thom/ The Stung Sen also offers an exit. A boat leaves most mornings around ten from beneath the big bridge, bound for Phat Sanday, a large floating village 80 to 90 kilometres downstream at the river's mouth on the Tonle Sap. Northward, moto-taxi drivers will spot you stepping off the...

Read more: Kampong Thom on Qualla

]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/6/6/8/kampong-thom-wk/w668-kampong-thom-downriver-and-off-the-map.mp3 0:06 6 full