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This article identifies factors influencing hotel and guesthouse workers' coping strategies during COVID-19 in Cambodia's premier tourist destination, Siem Reap. Drawing on qualitative data including 135 semi-structured interviews conducted between March 2022 and March 2023, we found that individual characteristics, dense community networks and government interventions did strengthen hotel and guesthouse workers' capacity to cope with the economic shock caused by the pandemic. Importantly, however, a series of deeper structural issues – most notably the structure of the labour market, the unevenness of social security coverage and pre-existing debt – greatly undermined their capacity to exercise resilience. As these findings suggest, it is necessary to look beyond individual traits and behaviours, and even community-level structures, if we are to truly understand community resilience.

This article assesses the issues concerning the ageing population in Takeo province and Kampot province, Cambodia, and the implications of the Cambodia National Ageing Policy (NAP) 2017-2030 in addressing those issues. By interviewing fifty randomly selected participants aged 60 and older, the findings revealed that the NAP 2017-2030 has not positively impacted the elderly population in Cambodia as it promised. The current generation of elderly Cambodians are Khmer Rouge conflict survivors and are financially insecure and rely on their adult children for financial support and caretaking. By closely examining the NAP 2017-2030 action plan, this study found many implications that led to slow progress and ineffectiveness. The paper concludes with a discussion on the significant issues concerning the ageing population in Cambodia today and the need for the Cambodian government to commit to implementing this ageing policy effectively.