Qualla: Banlung

Banlung: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit August Dominus, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the dry season everything in Banlung ends up the same colour. The laterite roads throw off a fine rust-red dust that settles on motorbike tanks, on cashew leaves, on the plastic chairs outside the market, on the white shirts of schoolchildren by mid-morning. It gets into the seams of your bag and stays there for weeks. The town has taken its palette from the ground it sits on, and so has the province it governs: Ratanakiri comes through Khmer from the Sanskrit ratna, gem, and giri, mountain. Gemstone mountains. The red is ancient basalt weathered down over hundreds of thousands of years, and the gems, as it happens, are not a metaphor.

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Image: August Dominus | CC BY-SA 4.0

Banlung: Gemstone Mountains

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit August Dominus, CC BY-SA 4.0. Blue zircon is what Ratanakiri actually produces — the most abundant stone in the province by a wide margin, with smaller quantities of amethyst, blue sapphire and peridot coming out of the same ground. Most of it is still won by hand, in shallow pits worked by families rather th...

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Image: August Dominus | CC BY-SA 4.0

Banlung: A Capital Named in 1979

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joshua Jensen from Taylors, SC, USA, CC BY 2.0. Banlung has been the capital of Ratanakiri only since 1979, and before that it was not even called Banlung — the settlement was known as Labansiek. The province itself was carved out of eastern Stung Treng in 1959, administered first from Lumphat and later from Veun Sai. What hap...

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Image: Joshua Jensen from Taylors, SC, USA | CC BY 2.0

Banlung: Small Town, Enormous Province

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit August Dominus, CC BY-SA 4.0. Banlung proper holds around 17,000 people, and the whole municipality counted 30,399 at the 2019 census — a modest population for the administrative seat of nearly 11,000 square kilometres. Life orbits a roundabout and a market where villagers from across the province come to sel...

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Image: August Dominus | CC BY-SA 4.0

Banlung: Reasons to Leave the Roundabout

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jensre, CC BY-SA 3.0. Nobody comes to Banlung for Banlung. Five kilometres out sits Yeak Laom, the volcanic crater lake managed by Tampuan community elders, and three kilometres west the Katieng waterfall drops into a pool you can swim in; Cha Ong is a short ride away in the other direction. Virachey ...

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Image: Jensre | CC BY-SA 3.0