Imagining Angkor: how an ancient civilisation looked

The stone monuments of Angkor may be awe-inspiring, but they don’t tell the full story of what was once the world’s largest city. Although architectural evidence is sparse, experts have determined that the temples once bore colour and stood in the midst of an urban centre of up to one million people.

Now artist Bruno Levy has combined established facts with educated guesses to illustrate what Angkor may have looked like at its peak, in order to recapture the essence of the cityscape for an upcoming pocket guidebook to the ancient civilisation. It is tentatively scheduled to be published at the end of October.

Recycle of life: rebuilding and destroying in this ‘new age’

Using Cambodia’s roads can be a hairy experience. It also tends to be a not altogether sober one, as artist Meas Sokhorn aims to get across in his installation H.E. Drink and Drive, part of "The New Age: Until Now" exhibition opening tonight at Java Gallery.

H.E. Drink and Drive is a curious work: a mass of black fibreglass in an unidentifiable shape, puckered by dents that resemble craters on rock or the imprints of facial features. Ominous red paint trickles around the construction, while broken glass bottles hang off the bottom on strings.

From Siem Reap, dolls find new life as Apsara dancers

In Spain, you see them dressed and moulded into kitsch and colourful flamenco dancers. In Vietnam, wistful girls wear ao dai. But there appears to be one national character Barbie and her imitators have not yet inhabited: the Apsara maiden.

In Siem Reap, where you would be hard pressed finding a craft not exploited for souvenir-selling, Cheab Sibora, 21, has been turning the iconic plastic Barbie doll into bejewelled, ikat-clad Apsara dancers for friends and family since 2011 but is now hoping to turn them over for profit.

Game on for tech champion

Softly spoken and with a self-effacing demeanour, you might not realise that Ear Uy (otherwise known as Louis) is a man very much in demand.

With invitations to attend technology conferences and exhibitions from Tokyo to the US embassy in Phnom Penh, and all the way to America’s Silicon Valley – all while running Cambodia’s first game development studio – Louis certainly has enough to keep him occupied. And that’s just his schedule for the next two months.

Wedding exhibition gives locals a chance to shine

This year’s wedding season kicked off with cake and cocktails as Sofitel hosted its second luxury wedding exhibition last weekend.

Ahead of the annual wedding season, which comes into full force in November, when wedding tents pop up all over the country, the free fair featured international and local designers, florists, catering companies and more.

Hello moto? Dance troupe addresses road safety issue

A funeral procession mourns the death of a young man who wasn’t wearing a helmet on his moto. Scenes show him, before the crash, playing drinking games with friends and scrambling for the attention of a pretty local girl in a plum-coloured dress.

Fortunately, these sombre scenes are fabricated for the audience through dance and theatre, though they will probably strike a chord with many Cambodians.

Art show takes "A Child’s Eye View" of the White Building

At sundown in Phnom Penh, if you go up high enough, you can often see children playing on the rooftop of the White Building.

While their home, once a celebrated social housing project designed by one of the country’s most acclaimed architects, has fallen into disrepair, a small community of artists is

flourishing.

A songwriter to the stars finds new literary calling

That's my song,” Sok Chanphal says over his shoulder on his moto as we pass a clothing store blasting a chord-heavy pop ballad onto Sihanouk Boulevard.

Chanphal, 29, has written the lyrics of more than 100 songs for Cambodian music monolith Hang Meas productions, many of them for pop star and Coca-Cola ambassador Aok Sokunkanha. With FM radio and TV stations under its banner, the production company is the most successful in the country and churns out around 10 new song releases a month.

While his words find commercial success through the mouths of Hang Meas’s best-known crooners, Chanphal is now finding recognition for a somewhat less-popular (and profitable) art form: literary fiction.

At Bestival, disabled youth rock the stage Bieber-style

The band’s frontman comes on stage to sing the highlight of the set. It’s his favourite song, and he’s been practising it for the past three hours, he says. The teenage crowd is rapturous. His name? Bieber.

Not Justin, but “Amazing” Bieber – a Cambodian MC called up on Friday night to enchant an audience of young people in the capital.

“Amazing Bieber” is a teenage singing sensation. He also has no legs.

Tech camp brings Silicon Valley to Kampong Cham

Kampong Cham may be a long way from Palo Alto, but one Silicon Valley institution has found its way to rural Cambodia: technology conferences.

Over the weekend some 600 people attended a two-day networking event in the province, which was hosted at the provincial capital's Chea Sim University of Kamchaymear.

BarCamp, with topics including Wikipedia and social networking, and more than 50 educational sessions on information technology, was open to the public and free.

‘We’re not even human, bro’

More like Balinese demons than DJs – that’s how the secretive duo behind Los Angeles-based electronic music project Indradevi see themselves.

Speaking with their faces masked by colourful Balinese dance costumes inspired by the Indonesian island’s pre-Hindu animist traditions and given a neon paint job, the description seems less far-fetched than it sounds.

U.S. prosecutors have charged two former JPMorgan Chase bankers with conspiring to conceal more than $500 million in losses related to the bank's ill-fated "London Whale" trade.

Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout worked for the London arm of JPMorgan (JPMPRD)'s chief investment office. Martin-Artajo was head of credit and equity trading at the chief investment office, while Grout was a trader on the team that made the complex credit derivatives bet that ultimately generated losses of more than $6 billion for the bank.Bruno Iksil, another trader on the the team, will not be prosecuted after agreeing to provide U.S. authorities with evidence about the trades and to testify at any trial.

Diplomacy dolled-up: Thai-Cambodia fashion exhibition

Thai-Cambodian diplomacy came in the guise of sequins and tweed over the weekend.

Scores of style fanatics turned out to see a fashion and beauty expo aimed at furthering cultural and economic exchange between the two countries.

The four-day 2013 Thailand Fashion and Beauty Show at Phnom Penh’s Paragon Supermarket, which ended on Sunday, showed off designs from both sides of the border, including one promising young Cambodian designer.

Unearthing the pieces that frame The Missing Picture

‘Sometimes an airplane crosses the sky,” says the narrator in Rithy Panh’s film The Missing Picture, as the camera hovers above a lone clay figurine, lying in the grass. “Is it observing us? Will it parachute a camera to me? So the world knows at last? The missing picture: That’s us.”

For decades, the award-winning director has examined characters in the shadow of the murderous Khmer Rouge – at sometimes uncomfortably close range. The perpetrators: S21: the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine and Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell; the defiant victims: Vann Nath and Bophana, or other survivors living in the aftermath of war: One Evening After the War.

Diplomacy dolled-up: Thai-Cambodia fashion exhibition

Thai-Cambodian diplomacy came in the guise of sequins and tweed over the weekend.

Scores of style fanatics turned out to see a fashion and beauty expo aimed at furthering cultural and economic exchange between the two countries.

The four-day 2013 Thailand Fashion and Beauty Show at Phnom Penh’s Paragon Supermarket, which ended on Sunday, showed off designs from both sides of the border, including one promising young Cambodian designer.

Garment workers see lives reflected on the big screen

Glarment worker Khieu Mok put in a 24-hour shift so she could take time off to vote in last month’s elections.

On Juy 28, at her hometown pagoda in Svay Rieng province, she held her ink-stained finger to the camera lens of film director Kalyanee Mam, who has followed her story for the past five years.

“The current wages [$80 a month] aren’t enough to live off. For now I only ask for $150,” she said.

From London via tuk-tuk

Tuk-Tuk rides are a must for any visitor who arrives in Asia. Few, however, drive to their hometown airport in one.

But for UK schoolteachers Rich Sears and Nick Gough, an Indian-made Piaggio auto-rickshaw has proved roadworthy for more than 30,000 kilometres – since their journey began at the British Museum in London.

On Thursday, the duo arrived in Phnom Penh, having left England last August on a quest to break the world record for the longest trip ever taken by tuk-tuk, which stands at 23,245 miles (37,409 kilometres).

Coming out in Cambodia: art series captures stigma

Vuth Lyno’s 2011 exhibition, "Thoamada" — a collection of portraits and audio recordings of nine gay and bisexual men from around Cambodia, faces brushed with vivid strokes of paint — proved to be the catalyst for one of the most significant moments in the 31-year-old artist’s life.

Thoamada, the Khmer word for “normal” or “everyday”, was an ironic tag for the photography series, which revolved around the stigmatisation the LGBT community in Cambodia faced. As a young gay Cambodian, he and his peers were often slapped with the word katoey – meaning “unnatural”, or a person who will not have a good future.

Cambodians all dolled-up for Japanese cosplay craze

In an innocuous hall at the Royal University of Phnom Penh’s Institute for Foreign Languages yesterday morning, five doll-faced women with hair in shades from pink to turquoise paraded on a stage, dressed in stockings, horns and frilly shirts.

They made superhero poses while Japanese music blasted from speakers and a scrum of teenage male onlookers scrambled to take pictures.

Wannabe stars shine bright in K-popularity competition

A storm of applause from a crowd of hundreds brought down the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) last Friday at the 2013 Cambodia K-POP World Festival – but it wasn’t superstar Psy with his hits Gangnam Style and Gentleman, but Cambodian teenagers competing to show their passion for Korean culture.

Organised by the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Cambodia, the festival, held in the Cambodia Korea Cooperation Centre at RUPP, saw 14 contestants – divided into vocal and performance categories – perform their favourite K-pop songs before a judging panel.