Indigenous Highlanders

Hilltribe Brao woman weaving a sleeping mat by hand

Mat Weaving – ត្បាញ កន្ទេល នៅ រតនគីរី

Ethnic Brao woman weaving a matt out of palm fronds. Shot in Ratanakiri, Northeast Cambodia. Please feel free to share my images—they are meant to be seen! Use them for your non-profit, on your blog, for fun and the like, but please link to www.ethancrowley.com and give credit to Ethan Crowley. All of my images […]

indigenous krung hilltribe man wearing a linkin park hat

Hardcore Linkin Park Fan? In Ratanakiri?

In the middle on nowhere in Ratanakiri, Cambodia; and here’s this Kreung indigenous hilltribe man, rockin’ the Linkin Park hat. He has no idea how hip he actually is. Please feel free to share my images—they are meant to be seen! Use them for your non-profit, on your blog, for fun and the like, but […]

Poling a dugout ferry across the river in ratanakiri

Ferry – កាណូត ឆ្លង ទន្លេ សេសាន

Dugout canoes act as ferrys across this section of the Sesan river. Note the guy sitting on his motorbike on the boat. 50 cents gets you across. Occasionally, something will go wrong and it’ll capsize, gracefully depositing the motorcycles on the river bottom. I’ve known a couple of people who it’s happened to; in fact, […]

highland minority man smokes a pipe

Organic pipe tobacco

I chatted idly with this older gentleman while were waiting at the hospital to transport a patient back home, his pipe dangling laconically from his mouth. Every year, he told me, he plants a few tobacco plants at his dryland rice farm, to supply him for the year. “It’s much cheaper than buying tobacco from […]

Red cashew fruit from an orchard in northeast cambodia

Cashews – ស្វាយ ចន្ទី នៅ រតនគីរី

Cashew fruit in Ratanakiri, Cambodia. The fruit tastes pretty astringent. I remember liking it and eating it often as a kid, but now that my tast buds have developed, I’m not a big fan. The actual cashew is that seed that’s hanging down below the fruit. In a way, cashews have transformed the lives of […]

An indigenous Brao highlander throwing a net.

Taken on the Se San river in Northeast Cambodia. He stands on the bow of the dugout, keeping a sharp lookout for fish just under the surface of the water. Then he casts his net to try his luck. So originally there was a hydroelectric dam slated to be built upstream, which would have displaced […]

indigenous minority Kreung man in Ratanakiri province, cambodia

អ៊ុំ ជន ជាតិ ក្រឹង

It’s been over a week since I posted last (so much for being a daily photoblog). So our DSL internet kept having problems; it would load all websites except WordPress, Twitter, Soundcloud, and a few others. There was some problem with the DNS servers, for you brainy people who know about such things. I finally […]

Sandals, Etc – ‘បែច ជើង

Can you imagine the barbarism of walking into a house (or in this case, a church building) with your shoes on? When it’s my turn to discard my flip flops and climb the stairs, I always try to stick my shoes off to the side, or kind of hide them under the steps of the […]

Old indigenous minority lady preparing betel nut to be chewed.

Gauges and Betel Nut

She had gauges before gauges were cool…. It’s funny how gauges are cool in the States in certain subcultures. Here among the Tampuan, Kreung and Jarai hilltribes, they’re popular among the senior citizen crowd. No indigenous teenager in their right mind would get gauges; that’s would be the American equivalent of wearing pleated, cuffed blue […]