Episode 20: Return to Phnom Penh

Interview with a Cambodian pilot who flies for Bangkok Airways, and the story of a Thai baby who survived a 1996 plane crash in Cambodia.

An interview with the only woman motorcylce taxi driver (that we know of!) in Phnom Penh.

A tour of some different facets of Wat Phnom, including its connections to the mythical founding of Phnom Penh.

Ethnic Khmers in Thailand: their language and how they function in Thai society.

Interviews with comic artists working for an organization to promote comics in Cambodia today, plus a comic artist from the 1980s.

In this episode, we accompany writer and Khmer refugee Teeda Butt (author of one of the original "Khmer Rouge survivor narratives,"To Destroy You is No Loss") on one of her trips back to Phnom Penh, as she reminisces about her childhood and talks about the changes in Phnom Penh over the past three decades.

Part One of a special two-part episode about a famous Khmer folk tale. You'll hear the tale discussed by a Khmer scholar and told by a fortune teller, and see clips from a 2003 movie version of the legend and doll stop-animation scenes from the tale created by studykhmer.com.

In this episode, the first of several in Season Two about the Khmers who live in Surin province in present-day Thailand, we visit a school started by a Khmer Sisaket man to teach Khmer reading and writing to Surin Khmers.

This episode is the second in a two-part series on contemporary young artists in Phnom Penh. We'll learn a little about the history of modern art in Cambodia, and attend a workshop with the young women's art group, Selapak Neary. Make sure to check out the full-length versions of my interview with their mentor Linda Saphan (none of which appears in this episode, although she herself does) in the "Culture and History" section of "Khmer Ephemera" on studykhmer.com

In this episode, we learn about a spirit shrine on the riverfront in Phnom Penh with an unusual name and a mysterious history.