Local Life & Traditional Crafts
The skills that shaped daily life on Kulen for generations,
and the urgent effort to pass them on before they disappear.
On Phnom Kulen, knowledge has always travelled by hand. How to read a forest for the right bamboo. How to seal a basket with tree resin so it holds water. How to smoke a handle over a kitchen fire for two to four weeks until it is hard enough to carry a blade. None of this was ever written down: it lived in the gestures of people who learned by watching, then doing, alongside someone who already knew.
That chain of transmission is breaking. The youngest generation on the plateau is growing up in a different economy: cashew farming, tourism work, the phone in the pocket. The elders who hold these skills are aging, and few people are asking to learn. What is at stake is not a craft industry — it is a body of knowledge, centuries old, that belongs to this mountain and nowhere else.
This page is about that knowledge: what it is, where it comes from, and why it matters.
A community shaped
by the mountain
Over 5,000 people across ten villages on Kulen plateau — farmers mostly, living with the forest as close neighbour, resource and limit.
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Most families on the plateau grew rain-fed rice through shifting cultivation: clearing and burning a plot, farming it for a season, then leaving it for years to regenerate. Since around 2005, many have converted those plots to permanent cashew nut plantations, drawn by steadier income. Cashew is now the main livelihood for most households, and its expansion into forested land was the single largest driver of deforestation in the park.
Alongside farming, families maintain orchards of coconut, areca palm, lychee, jackfruit, mango, papaya, mandarin, lime and bananas on the lower slopes. Some keep pigs and chickens. A few tend pepper or betel vine. The forest provides resin, rattan, bamboo, mushrooms and medicinal plants: resources that have always supplemented what the fields produce.
Life on Kulen has changed significantly since 2017, when a new road across the plateau connected the southern villages for the first time. Tourism has brought new income to communities that were previously isolated, and new pressures alongside it.
Farming with the forest, not against it
Supporting nearly 400 families to find income that does not require clearing more of the mountain.
Learn more.
Most families on the plateau grew rain-fed rice through shifting cultivation: clearing and burning a plot, farming it for a season, then leaving it for years to regenerate. Since around 2005, many have converted those plots to permanent cashew nut plantations, drawn by steadier income. Cashew is now the main livelihood for most households, and its expansion into forested land was the single largest driver of deforestation in the park.
Alongside farming, families maintain orchards of coconut, areca palm, lychee, jackfruit, mango, papaya, mandarin, lime and bananas on the lower slopes. Some keep pigs and chickens. A few tend pepper or betel vine. The forest provides resin, rattan, bamboo, mushrooms and medicinal plants: resources that have always supplemented what the fields produce.
Life on Kulen has changed significantly since 2017, when a new road across the plateau connected the southern villages for the first time. Tourism has brought new income to communities that were previously isolated, and new pressures alongside it.
What the hands know
Among the oldest residents of Phnom Kulen, a number still make the objects their families have always made: woven mats and baskets from vines and bamboo, waterproof carrying baskets sealed with natural resin, brooms from local grasses, and blacksmith tools such as cutlasses and knives shaped from recycled iron, with handles carved from twisted bamboo found in the Kulen forest.
These are not decorative objects. They are working tools and household goods, each taking days or weeks to produce using materials gathered from the forest and techniques that have never been written down: which bamboo to cut and when, how long to smoke a handle, which resin holds water and which does not. The objects take weeks to produce, and some much longer. The round basket is smoked above a kitchen fire for up to two months before it is finished. The cutlass handle requires three to four weeks of smoking. There are no shortcuts, this traditional craftsmanship takes time, attention, and knowledge.
The problem is transmission: younger generations are not learning the skills. Without intervention, the knowledge goes with the elders who hold it. The reasons are practical: cashew farming pays more reliably; tourism work requires no training in forest materials; the tools and techniques feel distant from the life being lived now; plastic objects are cheaper…
ADF, with support from HUMY and with previous partnership with Terre Cambodge, is working to change that by running training sessions where elders teach younger villagers, and creating the market access that makes the craft economically worth learning. Close to 100 artisans are currently producing and earning from their work. The objects are sold at the Anlong Thom community tourism centre, at the community shop at the western entrance of the park, and in Siem Reap. But the goal is not sales volume, it is keeping the knowledge alive long enough for it to be passed on.
The Crafts of Kulen
Pandan Mats
Kantel Romchek
Woven from the long leaves of the pandan plant, gathered by the streams that run down the Kulen slopes. The weaving itself is only possible during the rainy season, when the leaves retain enough moisture to be flexible, a constraint that has always shaped when this work is done and how much can be made.
Cultural significance: Mats have been a domestic staple across Cambodia for centuries, used as sleeping surfaces, gathering places, floor or ceiling coverings. On Kulen, the pandan plant is concentrated near streams, making this one of the most locally rooted of the plateau’s crafts.
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Materials: Pandan leaves collected near Kulen streams. Natural plant pigments for dyeing.
Making process: Cutting the leaves and removing thorns. First sun-drying for several days. Soaking in water for two days to restore flexibility. Second drying for one to two days. Dyeing by immersion in hot water with natural pigments. Third drying before weaving begins. The weaving itself takes five to fifteen days depending on the size of the mat, which is determined by the length of the leaves available.
Availability: Available as table mats, coasters and large floor or wall pieces. Orders can be placed at the Anlong Thom and Popel centres or in Siem Reap.
Cutlasses & Knives
Phkeark
The phkeak is one of the oldest tools in Cambodian daily life: a short cutlass used to clear vegetation, harvest crops and process wood. It appears in the bas-reliefs of Angkor Wat and the Bayon, carved there by sculptors working in the 12th century. On Kulen, the blacksmiths who make it today are working in an unbroken line from those same centuries.
Cultural significance: More than any other craft on this page, the phkeak connects the living community directly to the Angkorian period. Its form has not changed. The materials – twisted bamboo from the forest, iron beaten and shaped – have not changed. What a Kulen blacksmith makes today is what the bas-reliefs show.
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Round Baskets
Kanh Cheu
A basket used to measure, carry and store rice — the three sizes correspond to five, eight and twelve kilograms of grain, the quantities that structure a family’s harvest and daily life. Made from eight different types of bamboo, rattan and vine, with no plastic or synthetic binding anywhere in the structure.
Cultural significance: The kanh cheu is a functional object, but its construction is far from simple. The square base transitioning to a circular rim is a structural solution that takes years to learn to execute well. The final smoking phase — up to two months above the kitchen fire — is what gives each basket its colour and its durability. No two are the same.
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Materials: Eight types of bamboo, rattan, tree wood and forest vine. No synthetic materials.
Making process: Gathering the right raw materials from the forest takes two to three days. Slicing and preparing them takes another two to three days. Weaving the body of the basket takes four to seven days. Building the base takes three days. The ear handles take a day. Decorating the rim takes two days. The basket is then smoked above the kitchen fire for up to two months.
Availability: Available in three sizes at the community tourism centers and in Siem Reap.
Flat Baskets
Chang Ea
A flat, oval basket used to separate rice from its husk: an essential step in processing the harvest that every family on the plateau performs. Made from bamboo, rattan and the wood of the romdoul tree (Sphaerocoryne affinis), available in two sizes, and built to last around twenty years with daily use.
Cultural significance: The chang ea is one of the most commonly made objects on the plateau, and one of the least visible to outsiders, because it is purely functional and rarely leaves the family compound. Its longevity is part of its value: a well-made basket, properly smoked, outlasts most manufactured alternatives by years.
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Waterproof Baskets
Crus
A basket designed to carry water, sealed entirely with natural resins drawn from two tree species found on the Kulen slopes: Shorea vulgaris and Dipterocarpus alatus. The resin application and drying process is what makes this the most technically complex of the plateau’s woven objects, and the one that depends most directly on specific forest knowledge.
Cultural significance: The crus requires the maker to know not only how to weave but which trees produce the right resin, when to harvest it, and how to apply and cure it so the basket holds water without cracking. This is compounded forest and craft knowledge, and it is among the most likely to be lost, because so few people on the plateau still know both.
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Materials: Bamboo, romdoul wood (Sphaerocoryne affinis), rattan, forest vine, and natural resins from Shorea vulgaris and Dipterocarpus alatus.
Making process: Gathering the raw materials takes two to three days. Slicing and preparing them takes two to three days. Weaving the basket takes seven days. Applying the natural resin waterproofing takes a day. Drying takes a full week. Making the handles and carry rod takes a final day.
Availability: A rare piece. Available to order: contact the Anlong Thom or Popel centers.
Brooms
Amboh
Made from local grasses gathered on the plateau, dried and bound by hand. Two types are made. The broom is the most modest object on this page, and the one that most clearly shows how knowledge of local plant material runs through everything made here.
Cultural significance: Brooms require knowing which grasses to cut, at what time of year, and how long to dry them before they can be worked. It is the kind of knowledge that is so ordinary it seems invisible, and so ordinary that no one thinks to teach it until the moment it is gone.
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Availability: Available at the community tourism centres and in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh.
Workshops and boutique in Kulen
When you visit Phnom Kulen, stop at the western entrance of the park or at the Anlong Thom CBTC shop to see a selection of small handicraft souvenirs from Kulen Crafts and other products produced by the villagers (black ginger…). You can also take part, upon demand, in a workshop to learn how to weave pandan and meet the artisans from the village.
In the catalogue, you will find all prices, sizes, seasonal availability and ordering information for all products.
Available at the community shop at the western entrance of the park, at the Anlong Thom Community-Based Tourism Centre and in Siem Reap and. Contact Kulen Crafts: kulencrafts@gmail.com