We catch a bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, the town that serves as basecamp for visits to the temples at Angkor. As we leave the suburban sprawl for the grasslands and paddy fields of rural Cambodia, I'm struck by how flat this part of the country is. More than that, it's like a basin. All the timber houses are built high up on stilts, at least 6' off the ground, ready for the monsoon. When the rains come, the Mekong water levels rise dramatically, causing the Tonle Sap, the largest lake in South East Asia, to flood the country each year. Before we came here, I'd thought that there was just one wat at Angkor, but there are scores of them. Much in the way of Ancient Egypt, successive Khmer devaraja (god-kings) built evermore
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