Qualla: Pursat province

Pursat province: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sotheaboth, CC BY-SA 3.0. The most expensive wood in the world begins as an infection. Aquilaria trees grow ordinary and pale until a parasitic mould takes hold in a wound, and the tree responds by flooding the injured tissue with a dark, aromatic resin. That resin is agarwood, and the oil pressed from it is oud. Pursat's forests grow Aquilaria crassna in quantity, and Pursat agarwood was long considered the finest anywhere; by the early 1970s oud Cambodi commanded the highest prices on the market, sold on a belief that it worked on the mind as well as the nose. There is no way to know from outside whether a given tree carries resin. So the trees came down - felled by the thousand as gifts for the royal family and for officials - and the wild population has been cut back so far that Aquilaria is now listed as endangered.

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Image: Sotheaboth | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pursat province: Floating Banyan

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paxse, CC BY-SA 3.0. The province's name is a small piece of Buddhist poetry. Pursat renders the Khmer Poŭthĭsăt, which breaks into two parts: poŭthĭ, from the Sanskrit and Pali bodhi, the tree beneath which the Buddha attained enlightenment, and săt, from rôsăt, meaning to float. Floating banyan. Fa...

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Image: Paxse | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pursat province: Mountain, Plain, Lake

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yourecoveredinbees, CC BY 4.0. Pursat covers 12,692 square kilometres, making it Cambodia's fourth largest province by area, though it ranks only fifteenth by population - about 516,000 people spread very thin. Forest covers roughly 58 percent of it. The Cardamom range fills the west and southwest along the Th...

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Image: Yourecoveredinbees | CC BY 4.0

Pursat province: Six Million Trees

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phil Whitehouse from London, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0. The agarwood story did not end with the depletion of the wild stands. Because the resin can be induced rather than waited for, the modern industry works by deliberately infecting cultivated Aquilaria and harvesting the response - a way of getting oud without stripping the forest ...

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Image: Phil Whitehouse from London, United Kingdom | CC BY 2.0

Pursat province: Condominiums at Thmada

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LacanAndStockhausen, CC BY-SA 4.0. The other new money arrived at the far western edge. In the border village of Thmada, in Veal Veang District, Chinese investors have committed close to 10 billion baht to build an entire town from nothing, planned in five phases with condominiums, a luxury hotel, restaurants and ...

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Image: LacanAndStockhausen | CC BY-SA 4.0