The Guardian
Happy eco-campers: protecting wildlife in Cambodia
The path to Preak Tachan ranger station, in Botum Sakor national park, Cambodia, snakes through dense, silent forest. It crosses bubbling rivers and clearings where luminous butterflies flit around gargantuan hanging vines and tall wild grasses. It’s The Lost World, Indochina-style. I half expect a ...
Duncan Forgan
‘I have to do this’: Myanmar garment workers forced into sex work by Covid
When Hla, 19, tried to go back to work seven months ago after having a baby, there were no jobs. Hundreds of garment factories in Myanmar had closed after western fashion brands cancelled orders due to the pandemic, leaving thousands of women jobless. As lockdown gripped Yangon, ...
Lorcan Lovett and Nay Chi Nway
Thao Nguyen Phan review – tribute to the Mekong River's myth and might
Thao Nguyen Phan’s Becoming Alluvium opens with sound: an outboard motor puttering in the dark. The tea-brown, silt-clouded water of the Mekong appears, gliding beneath the prow of a little boat. Lines from the great poet Rabindranath Tagore’s The Gardener lap the screen, concluding: “Why did the ...
Hettie Judah
One million Cambodians under threat from development of vital wetlands – report
New sprawling development near Phnom Penh could prompt environmental catastrophe, including for the capital’s water systems. The destruction of critically-important wetlands by politically-connected developers in Cambodia threatens to flood more than one million Phnom Penh residents, ruin the city’s wastewater system, force hundreds of families from ...
Christopher Knaus
Myanmar army accused of new atrocities in attack on Rakhine village
Kyaw Thu* waited until night fell before taking his family to the bank of a river not far from their village. While millions across the world were told to remain at home to stay safe from the coronavirus pandemic, he and his neighbours were forced ...
Rebecca Ratcliffe, Emanuel Stoakes and Cape Diamond in Yangon
Asia's hardest year for dengue fever – in pictures

The global toll of dengue fever is becoming well known, with rising temperatures contributing to severe outbreaks that made 2019 the worst year on record for the disease. In 1970 only nine countries faced severe dengue outbreaks. But the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes that ...
Photographer Luke Duggleby and journalist Laure Siegel
Mekong basin's vanishing fish signal tough times ahead in Cambodia
Tbong sits in the shade of a makeshift stilt hut over the edge of Tonlé Sap lake, surrounded by curious children. “Snake, catfish, elephant fish ” he says, his eyes crinkled against the sun. “Before, a long time ago the lake had a lot of ...
Myanmar scrambles to rescue flood victims as landslide kills dozens
Myanmar troops and rescue services have scrambled to provide aid in flood-hit parts of the country after rising waters caused by the annual monsoon rains forced residents to flee by boat and a landslide killed at least 52 people. The deluge has tested disaster response after the ...
If we care about plastic waste, why won’t we stop drinking bottled water?
For all the innovation and choice that define the food and drink industries, if you want to make money, you could do a lot worse than bung some water in a bottle and flog it. A litre of tap water, the stuff we have ingeniously ...
Simon Usborne
The Thai children putting a brave face on the horror of sexual abuse
When photographer Marieke van der Velden was asked by the Dutch charity Down to Zero to do an awareness-raising project on Thai children who had been victims of commercial sexual exploitation, she was uncertain how to proceed. For obvious reasons, her subjects’ faces could not be shown. In Thailand, Van der ...