AFTER weeks of heightened tensions caused by an increase of troops and armored vehicles on the streets, the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party's highly anticipated mass demonstration remained a peaceful affair today, though leaders cautioned there may be more to come.

The thousands of opposition supporters who poured into the capital's Freedom Park in the early morning spent most of the demonstration sitting down – at times, in prayer – as police watched on.

In an event that resembled the CNRP's previous rallies at Freedom Park, opposition leader Sam Rainy called for the government to recount votes in disputed provinces or stage a re-vote if this is not possible.

"We need to see in black and white that the people of Cambodia want justice and freedom," he said. "We need freedom and change. This gathering is giving everyone a chance to express this."

Underscoring how little the CPP has responded to the opposition's demands, Rainsy continued calling for a joint committee to be formed to investigate irregularities, an idea proposed the morning after the election.

"We hold this non-violent protest to find justice for voters and demand the creation of an independent committee, consisting of national and international organisations – including the UN – to resolve election irregularities."

Rainsy also reiterated his desire for King Norodom Sihamoni – who will arrive back from China next week – to intervene if the CNRP's claims of election victory are not recognised.

The National Election Committee will announce official results tomorrow and is expected to uphold the CPP's claims of victory, 68 seats to the opposition's 55.

But Kem Sokha, vice president of the CNRP, called for the NEC to delay its announcement until a committee is formed to solve irregularities.

In an accompanying statement, the CNRP said resolving the issue was beyond the NEC's mandate, because it had "caused all of these irregularities".

"The committee should comprise a member of the two main political parties, civil society, international organisations and the UN to probe these irregularities and the NEC's mistakes," the statement says. "If there is no such committee formed . . . the CNRP will continue to hold mass, non-violent demonstrations until a solution is found and justice is given to the voters.

Before the opposition toned down its rhetoric last Monday, the words "mass demonstration" had led many to think today's event could get heated.

But Rainsy's claim that the gathering would be as much a group prayer session as anything else turned out to be prophetic.

Despite their superiors banning their involvement in mass demonstrations, scores of monks showed up in support of the opposition. At times, they sat in prayer. They also chanted and cheered along with everyone else.

Protesters, including youths, the elderly and civil servants, spent much of the demonstration sitting on the ground, clutching lotus flowers and signs.

Two groups acknowledged as providing crucial support to the opposition at the ballot in July – garment workers and land evictees – were also in strong attendance.

They were represented on stage by Cambodian Confederation of Unions president Rong Chhun and Boeung Kak lake activist Tep Vanny, respectively.

Som Virak, 23, a university student who lives in Phnom Penh, said he had learned through listening to independent radio that the election had been filled with irregularities.

"I've just come today to find out where my vote is. What happened to it?" he said, adding that if so many had not gone "missing", the CNRP would have won.

Although military and police presence in the crowd was moderate, hundreds of troops and police were deployed on streets leading into the capital.

Yon Sineath, a human rights observer at the event, said police had set up roadblocks at various points around the city and made it difficult for many to make it to Freedom Park.

"Some police have tried to block people – and monks, too," she said.

While Rainsy praised the number of supporters who had come from outer provinces, he said demonstrations had also been held in other parts of the country.

"Today, we join together to meditate for peace, freedom and justice," he said.

Kheng Tito, national military police spokesman, praised protesters for remaining calm and said police had carried out their tasks of providing security and controlling traffic.

Tito said officers were prepared for further demonstrations, but he did not expect many would be held.

"I don't believe people who came today will keep showing up all the time. They'll be exhausted and bored," he said.

Tep Bopha Prasidh, a wealthy businesswoman and wife of Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh, has been anointed with the sought-after royal title of oknha.

According to an August edition of the Royal Gazette, King Norodom Sihamoni signed off on the new title on July 11.

Roughly translated as tycoon, oknha is a prestigious title dating back centuries that is usually bestowed on wealthy individuals with close ties to the government, and those who make sizeable contributions to the public coffers.

But it's not always clear why the honorific is given, and reasons are rarely explained.

After being sentenced to two and a half years in prison and being freed while waiting for her appeal on a bribery conviction, Dy Proem, Prime Minister Hun Sen's cousin, was given the coveted title in August.

A batch of Wikileaks cables released in 2011 revealing Cambodia's top 10 tycoons indirectly refers to Cham Prasidh and his wife as one of Cambodia's most well-connected power couples, right up there with Prime Minister Hun Sen and his wife, Bun Rany.

Kem Ley, an independent political analyst, welcomed the appointment but warned that the government should look more broadly at someone's profile before awarding the coveted title.

He added that the granting of oknha or nak oknha occurs after a person has given more than $100,000 to the government for infrastructure projects.

"If we just look at their money it is not enough, we should look at their morals also – whether they have had any problem's in society or corruption," he said, calling for a committee to be established to help award the title.

"It's not just about the money," Ley said, rattling off a list of non-business community Cambodians who would make for good candidates: slain union leader Chea Vichea; journalist and political activist Mam Sonando; and murdered environmental activist Chut Wutty.

"I think they can get this title, but we don't look at them," he said.

The title can play an important role by creating role models and setting the tone for the young generation, Ley said.

"The big issue in our society is what we call the conflict of interest when a powerful person is in the government and their wife gets a high position in the society or in business."

I think the promise was made for us to vote only for them.

Miranda Glasser test-drives the zip-wire, Siem Reap's newest attraction

Standing on the edge of a 100-foot-high platform about to step off into thin air, the phrase "legs turned to jelly" suddenly took on a very real meaning. Luckily I didn't need my legs as I was to be carried by a harness, ropes and gravity, and about to zip-wire through Angkor Archeological Park at the newly-opened Flight of the Gibbon eco-adventure tour. With thoughts like, "Why am I doing this?" and "Is this really necessary for the article?" going through my head I launched off and instantly realised what all the fuss was about.

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Jim Zigarelli, vice president of online communications and press relations at Treetop Asia, says most people are scared on their first zip but after their second or third, they love it.

Speaking as a strict non adrenalin-junkie, I can attest to this. Once I got over my initial, heart-in-mouth fears the experience was incredible. It is hard to describe the concept of speeding along a canopy of trees, wind buffeting your face, a great, green splash of jungle all around you and before you know it – it's all over. After my third of fourth attempt, I even managed to look down.

The tour opened in June and now that the full course has been completed, thrill-seekers can zip along ten lines, cross four suspended 'sky' bridges and enjoy views from a120-foot-high tree house, not to mention the 50-foot abseil down at the end.

"The highest point in the course is about fifty metres, most of the course is between 20 and 35," says Zigarelli. "The longest zipline is 300 metres and there's one double called the honeymoon zipline for two people to go together. The whole tour takes about two and half hours depending on how many people – the most people in any group would be nine."

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The company places great emphasis on safety and its ecological responsibility. The best quality equipment is used and the 'sky rangers' are highly trained and make the ride a reassuring one. There are two rangers per group and unlike some other zipwire tours, following the safety briefing, they do all the clipping and unclipping themselves leaving nothing for you to do but enjoy the ride. One ranger is stationed at each end of the zip, with the second one yelling a greeting of "feet up, feet up" as you come zooming in.

To preserve the environment, each zipline platform has been ingeniously built using a method of wooden blocks cabled to the trees.

"The company's philosophy is wherever they go into the jungle, they try to protect and replenish what is there, so they've already planted 3,000 trees in the jungle here," says Zigarelli. "Part of the environmental and the Forestry Department's involvement was we can have no impact on the trees, so the platforms are cabled – there are no bolts. Everything is cabled to the tree using wrenches, large devices that push the cable against these blocks that push against the tree to hold everything in place. The idea is that if we were to go away in ten years you could take it away and you wouldn't know we were there."

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This is the third Flight of the Gibbon tour. The first one opened in the mountains near Chiang Mai in 2007, and the other is in Chonburi, between Bangkok and Pattaya. Zigarelli says they are all quite different.

"At its core we call it a zipline eco-adventure but the thrill is the zipline," he says. "With this one you're above the canopy for most of it, looking down on the canopy. I like that you can see all around you but I also like being immersed in the forest."

This tour starts in the forest and you slowly climb higher on wooden staircases that blend naturally with the environment. Once the course is completed, the tour ends with a nature walk through the jungle, home to nearly 1,000 flora and fauna species.

The guides, most of them from the local area, are skilled at pointing out various plants, butterflies and spiders. It was fascinating even to this arachnophobe to see the tiny, yellow, horned crab spider, a large banana spider and a tarantula nest.

The other aspect of Flight of the Gibbon is its involvement in reintroducing gibbons to the area, something the company has successfully done at its Chiang Mai base where there are now two adult Lar gibbons which gave birth to two babies in captivity, with another adult pair arriving shortly.

"The idea was when possible to work with professionals who know the gibbons to see if it's possible to reintroduce them, because they're pretty much extinct in the forest," says Zigarelli. "Here we approached the Forestry Department and the Wildlife Alliance and asked them if it was possible. They said they think so and so we now have two gibbons in cages in order to be acclimated to the jungle. Once they're acclimated – which takes about 4 months – they'll let them go in a controlled environment and see how they do."

Flight of the Gibbon is open daily. People of all ages are welcome including children from five years old upwards.

PARK HYATT'S DEBUT ART EXHIBITION
Last night saw the well-attended launch of Park Hyatt's promised contribution to local art and culture, with its very first art exhibition, entitled "Three Artists in One Show".

The three artists whose work is included in this new exhibition are Mao Soviet, Lim Muy Theam, and Amy Lee Sanford. Both the felicitously-named Mao Soviet and Lim Muy Theam – of Theam's House fame and acclaim – are well known in Siem Reap art circles, having both exhibited at the Hotel de la Paix before it transmogrified into the Park Hyatt. Theam has also exhibited in town at Sofitel and McDermott's Gallery.

Siem Reapers may have already encountered the work of Amy Lee Sanford. She apparently made the transition from ceramics and sculpture to performance work, according to the Phnom Penh Post in January this year, " by recreating the vase-breaking ritual, spontaneously, in public spaces: on dusty footpaths in Siem Reap and the heaving streets of Phnom Penh." The "spontaneous" bout of vase breaking was duly recorded on videotape which was later shown in an exhibition in the Penh.

Sanford's a Cambodian-American artist working in drawing, sculpture, installation, and now performance. She was born in 1972 and in 1974 her mother fled Cambodia with her, vying for the safety of the US. She first returned to Cambodia in 2005, and in 2009 she returned and decided to relocate.

CHARITY DINNER AND AUCTION
Siem Reap's eleemosynary set is being called into wallet-opening action again, this time by high-profile Il Forno restaurant and Celliers d'Asie tonight, starting at 7pm.

The two businesses will host an evening of traditional food and wines in support of the Angkor Hospital for Children for the purchase of a new autoclave to sterilise instruments.

Il Forno will sponsor all the dinner, and Celliers d'Asie will sponsor all wines.

The aim of the evening is to raise at least $5,000. There are 70 seats available for the dinner, the cost of which is $35 – this will bring in $2,450, and more funding will be elicited from the results of an auction that will be held immediately after the dinner, at 9pm. There is a fabulous list of items up for auction – far too many to list here, but once again Siem Reap businesses and people have outdone themselves in the generosity stakes.

Maddalena Morandi, co-owner Il Forno said, "When we did the dinner two years ago we raised about $4,000 between dinner and auction. It would be great to have more people bidding this year so that we can get to the full $5,000."

Maddalena points out that the auction will be opened to the public so that everybody, not just dinner guests, can join in the cause.

Meanwhile, Siem Reap's much-lauded 'Big Mum,' Geraldine Cox AM of Sunrise Children's Villages will hold a Big Cook In fundraiser at Our Big Kitchen in Sydney Australia's iconic suburb, Bondi.

This is a being billed as a "unique, special fundraising" occasion and according to the publicity spiel, it will be "a hands-on experience" where participants will be "preparing and packing food to feed Sydney's homeless and vulnerable communities as well as eating the 'fruits of your labour'."

Present will be Geraldine and some of her "inspirational children" who happen to be visiting from Cambodia.

ACCOLADE FOR SORIA MORIA
The September issue of Condé Nast Traveler magazine names Siem Reap's Soria Moria boutique hotel as one of 14 recipients of its 2013 World Savers Award.

There were 174 applicants for the awards which are given to travel organisations "with exceptional achievement in social and environmental responsibility."

Soria Moria received the World Savers Award for 'Doing it All: City Hotels.' Condé Nast Traveler describes the reasoning as "because it changes lives in its community."

Rubbish piling up along the river, underneath market stalls and alongside the road is an all-too familiar sight for Siem Reap inhabitants. But one expat has decided actions speak louder than words and has instigated a Clean Up Temple Town campaign, with the first clean-up day scheduled to coincide with environmental campaign Clean Up the World, which runs from September 20-22 worldwide.

Australian expat Richard Crlik says the idea stems from when he first came to Siem Reap and opened a guesthouse along the river.

"To get to it you were wading through rubbish," he says. "So for the first month I used to get laughed at by all the locals because I'd go out there and start sweeping and cleaning the rubbish. Within two months, suddenly I had half the street coming out every morning picking up, and cleaning."

Since then, Crlik has become increasingly frustrated with seeing rubbish everywhere, especially along the riverside.

"I walk my dog every day along the river, it's filthy. In the afternoon I see people sitting on the canals that are putrid where they join the river, with rubbish flowing out," he says.

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While he acknowledges long-term change is a more complex issue, Crlik feels there is nothing stopping people from getting out there and leading by example to spread the green message.

"There's lots of us doing lots of things in many different ways, but one way we can actually get out and help is to improve their lives in a really easy way, and that's by cleaning up the town. We need action – and it's not a hard action."

Crlik's hands-on approach has hit home and he now has the support of many of Siem Reap's major hotels including Shinta Mani, Le Meridien Angkor and Casa Angkor Hotel, as well as various schools. He is also involving some of the Khmer community, helped by expat Michael Foidl and his Khmer wife who have been translating some of the publicity material into Khmer and spreading the word.

Crlik is planning the first clean-up on September 22, the final day of the worldwide campaign. The river seemed the obvious choice as his first location.

"My initial reason for doing the river was because we're not invading peoples' homes," he says, "We're not invading the tourist area and business area where people are."

A meeting was held on Wednesday at Shinta Mani Hotel to decide, among other things, the logistics of tackling this task.

Crlik has divided up the river into sections with various groups tackling different areas. Three schools – Sunrise Children's Orphanage, Chea Sim Primary School and ABCs & Rice – will handle the area near the crocodile farm, starting on September 20, while other groups will work their way up.

Local children from Green Gecko will also be involved as will kids from the Husk Foundation and Honour Village Foundation.

Crlik's team has also managed to enlist the help of private rubbish collection company GAEA, which has agreed to collect all the rubbish bags from designated areas, plus have clean up boats working along the northern sector of the river clearing floating rubbish from the Royal Palace area. The company is also keen to provide ongoing support for future events, he says.

"I'm also trying to contact Apsara, who have the same responsibility for the southern section of the river," he says. "They tend to only pick up recyclables and not actual rubbish, but I'll see if I can get them involved."

Crlik says he has been overwhelmed by community support and is quietly confident he will get a good turnout on the day, with many local businesses promising to provide staff to help out.

"I'm conservatively hoping around 200 people will show up on the day," he says. "Hopefully people will see that with just a bit of a clean-up there is a difference; there's less flies, there's less mosquitoes, there's less disease – that's number one - number two, it's just easier to walk around."

Cyclists from throughout Cambodia and international participants can now sign up to the not-for-profit Village Focus International's Angkor Wat Bike Event, in association with CIMB Bank of Malaysia.

Entering its eighth year, the annual charity fundraiser will take place on Saturday November 30, and will feature three rides of varying distances: 100 kilometres, 30 kilometres and 17 kilometres.

The Angkor Wat Bike4Kids ride encourages participants of all ages and fitness levels to cycle through the Angkor Wat temple complex to raise funds for local charities supporting vulnerable children and victims of sex trafficking.

Rick Reece, director of Village Focus International said, "The Angkor Wat Bike4Kids offers bike riders from around the world to join in solidarity to ride on the Angkor road through forests, rice fields and the magnificent ancient temples complex.

"This road is relatively care free in the early morning hours and we encourage friends and families to cycle together."

Village Focus International and Terre Des Hommes-Netherland hope this year's ride will be its biggest and aim to raise over $60,000, as well as beating previous participation figures.

Vath Chamroeun, secretary general of the National Olympic Committee of Cambodia, said that some of the funds raised will be used to help children living with parents in prison.

"This project works to identify the most immediate needs of children, their mothers and pregnant women living in prison," he said.

Children, their mothers and pregnant women in prison here do not have access to suitable health care, adequate nutrition or education. The government budgets about 60 cents per prisoner per day, and incarceration is even more difficult for women who have to take their children into prison with them.

Hang Piphal, country director at Village Focus International, said four organisations will benefit from the Bike4kids ride: Il Nodo; Cambodian Center for the Protection of Children's Rights; the Cambodian Women's Crisis Center; and Aple.

She added that in addition, money raised from the ride will be used to construct kindergartens in prisons in three provinces – Siem Reap, Battambang, and Banteay Meanchey.

Bike ride registration for foreigners is $85 and includes a race shirt and another shirt as a gift. Cambodian registration costs $25.

It's a balmy Friday night, the moon is almost full and while the Blue Moon isn't exactly full, there's a fair sized crowd sipping coffee and soaking up the mellow sounds of a cool saxophonist who's blowin' in the wind on the small outdoor stage.

The Blue Moon is the latest, and indisputably the grandest, addition to the strip of sleek Korean coffee shops that have sprung up on National Road 6, en route to the airport, servicing mainly the enclave of South Koreans residing and doing business in the immediate vicinity.

The coffee shops don't attract a passing pedestrian parade because pedestrians are mostly non-existent.

Nor do they cater for the bicycle and motor scooter crew – they're strictly upmarket, suburban in ambience and precisely geared at the well-dressed, well-mannered, well-manicured casual Korean trendies who eschew two-wheels and arrive mostly in new model sedans and SUVs.

The five major coffee shops along the half-kilometre strip all have similar a-la-lounge-room interior design – cosy and comfy modern armchairs and sofas, lots of wood combining sleekness and trimmings of laid-back suburban affluence.

The coffee is good all along the strip and prices are cheaper than the downtown cafes frequented by western expats, ranging from $2.20 to $2.50.

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All the Korean cafes feature a good array of pastries and two outlets – Jasmine Bakery and Coffee, and Café Ti Amo bake pastries and bread rolls that are also sold in the western expat supermarket haven, Angkor Market.

Café Ti Amo in particular excels with the range of breads and pastry delights that it sells at Angkor Market and other outlets, and while Café Ti Amo is South Korean, the name is Italian and translates as the I Love You Café.

La Rose Café goes one step further in the bakery department and makes and sells its own interesting pizzas and sandwiches.

The URL Coffee Shop and Bakery, next to the Total Fashion shop, is a quaint little nook that boasts of being a 'book café.' It features shelves of books which coffee imbibers can delve into and the décor is enhanced by cute little tea and coffee pot sets. The owner, Lee Yong Hyuk, says one of his goals was to bring culture not only to the coffee drinking set, but also to the Korean strip of National Road 6, as the highway itself tends to be a tad barren. Lee Yong Hyuk says he also set out to make the café a funky work area where customers can study or do their office work in an ultra-relaxed mode.

But the newbie on the block is also the biggest and flashest of them all – the afore-mentioned Blue Moon Café.

This is a complex rather than simply a café – set on a large block of land, it sits next to an arcade of Blue Moon shops, the largest being a very well stocked fruit shop.

The Blue Moon café itself has a very smart interior that incorporates a silver-and-glass bar that's beginning to pull a lively Korean nighttime crowd.

Outside are several pavilions where groups can congregate and these are interspersed with lush little garden strips, gushing fountains and odd statuary that has a sort of undeclared eroticism.

Customers in these pavilions can order baskets of fresh fruit from the fruit shop. Fine fresh pastry and savoury dishes are also available.

There's also a stage that's set up for outdoor musical performances, and at present Friday night features a talented saxophonist.

Wi-fi is available but most regulars seem to come here to socialise and chat face to face.

All in all it's a great place to hang, although don't expect to see too many, if any, western faces.

Well worth checking out..

As the only web-based outbound travel agency in Cambodia, Imperial Rina Group struggled to make inroads in a cash economy when it first started out three years ago. But using a mix of online and in-person payments, IRG has since enjoyed booking growth of 20 per cent from 2011 to 2012. Director Vatanak Chheng discussed Cambodia's travel trends with the Post's Laura Ma

Why start IRG?
When I moved back to Cambodia with my sister in 2010, there was a big trend of people over here going overseas, which really started in 2006 and 2007. Mostly it was all-inclusive group tours. So smaller families, individual travellers and business people who wanted to go abroad found it hard to get affordable accommodation overseas. We saw an opportunity to bridge that gap and knew there was a niche market for it.

What were some of the challenges?
Hotel bookings here aren't typically done online. I think there is a fear of it. Our initial idea was developing something online and educating people to use it. But it didn't catch on. We had to change the process, making online booking more like a cash-based payment. The site is more of a marketing tool for price comparison. After which they can contact us to book and we receive their payment either by bank transfer, Wing or collecting the money directly. It's going to be a long haul before people start to use credit cards to make purchases online for Cambodia.

Is travel picking up here?
From 2011 to 2012, we saw about a 12 per cent increase in outbound travel. In the first quarter of this year, we saw about five per cent growth. In this period, IRG also saw growth [in bookings] of 23 per cent.

How does this trend reflect Cambodia's emerging market?
It is a reflection of how the economy is faring on a global scale. The more we are integrated, the more we are globalised, meaning foreigners do business in Cambodia and Cambodians go overseas for business. It also reflects what people can afford. Travelling is a luxury still in Cambodia. For this to grow, our middle class needs to grow.

Does culture affect outbound travel here?
Social media plays an important role. People see "what's cool" to visit on Instagram [and Facebook]. Cambodians are also becoming more creative in terms of the money they are spending and the value they are getting out of it. Instead of spending a couple hundred dollars going to Sihanoukville, they can spend the same value to see something completely different.

Is travel going to take off or is it still in the early stages?
We lack a young subset that can afford to travel overseas. Kids today between 18 and 25, when they enter an older demographic, they will be avid travellers. They will have stories to tell their kids, their kids will tell their friends and that will become a trend. But I think it's going to be years before travel becomes the norm rather than a luxury.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Both the United Nations and Human Rights Watch yesterday lambasted the Cambodian government in no uncertain terms for its failure to secure funding for the Khmer Rouge tribunal's beleaguered national component.

The court is now facing a 140-person strike by national staffers following months of unpaid salaries.

While reiterating his support for the court, UN Special Expert to the tribunal David Scheffer said in a statement on Monday that the latest financial fiasco represented "a failure on the part of the Royal Government of Cambodia to meet its legal obligation to fund the salaries of most national staff at the Court".

"The United Nations has pressed the Royal Government of Cambodia repeatedly to step up to its legal obligation so as to avoid such crises," the statement continues.

Article 15 of the agreement that formed the tribunal states: "Salaries and emoluments of Cambodian judges and other Cambodian personnel shall be defrayed by the Royal Government of Cambodia."

Article 16 states that salaries of international staff members are the responsibility of the UN.

However, court spokesman Neth Pheaktra noted yesterday that "in practice, on both sides, neither the UN nor the government pays for their side", and that both sides are actually funded by international donations.

Deputy Prime Minister Sok An met earlier this week with the ambassadors for Japan and Australia – the court's two biggest donors – to request more funding for the cash-strapped court. Both declined to pledge any new money to the court's national side.

The government's inability to meet the funding gap, said HRW, was in fact a stall tactic on the part of the government aimed at further disrupting the court's work.

In its statement, it called the shortfall the government's "latest attempt to undermine efforts to bring former Khmer Rouge leaders to justice".

"Prime Minister Hun Sen has spent years obstructing the trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders, but donors to the court have played along and continued to subsidize a seriously compromised court," HRW Asia Director Brad Adams said in the statement, before urging donors to "withhold future contributions until the Cambodian government pays its agreed share of the costs of holding the Khmer Rouge accountable".

In his own statement, acting tribunal Office of Administration director Tony Kranh seemingly ignored the accusations yesterday, thanking Scheffer for his fundraising efforts, and expressing his "hope that those who have suspended their work will be willing and able to return to active duty" when funds become available.

Provincial authorities in Siem Reap discovered a stockpile of rosewood weighing approximately 21 tonnes in Banteay Srei district on Wednesday afternoon.

Tea Kimsoth, provincial Forestry Administration director, yesterday credited joint efforts made by the Forestry Administration and anti-economic crime police officials in discovering the wood stashed in Khnar Sandai commune.

Banteay Srei district governor Sou Sun said that, after discovering the rosewood on Wednesday, police transported it via truck to a nearby nursery.

Im Un, Khnar Sandai commune police chief, and his deputy, Em Un, told the Post they had no knowledge of the seizure or any idea about who was behind the crime.

Ten Sem, Banteay Srei village chief, also claimed no knowledge of the rosewood bust.

But, he admitted, about 20 to 30 members of his village harvested luxury wood from a nearby mountain on a daily basis.

Banteay Srei villagers, however, don't harvest "the big rosewood, they can only get branches or roots, up to two to three kilograms per day to support themselves", Ten said.