Cambodia

From the ninth to the fifteenth centuries the Khmer Empire dominated mainland Southeast Asia from its capital at Angkor, building hundreds of temples and a vast network of reservoirs and canals. Angkor Wat, raised in the twelfth century, is the largest religious monument in the world. The empire declined, the capital shifted south, and Cambodia became a smaller kingdom squeezed between Siam and Vietnam.

France made Cambodia a protectorate in 1863, which preserved the monarchy and arguably the state itself. Independence came in 1953 under King Norodom Sihanouk. The country was drawn into the Vietnam War, heavily bombed along its eastern border, and destabilised, and in 1975 the communist Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh.

Under Pol Pot the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities, abolished money and religion, and worked, starved, and executed the population on collective farms. Between 1975 and 1979 an estimated 1.7 to 2 million people died — close to a quarter of the country. A Vietnamese invasion ended the regime in 1979, but civil war dragged on into the 1990s. Hun Sen governed from 1985 until 2023, when he handed the premiership to his son, Hun Manet.

Cambodia is a Theravada Buddhist country, and the wat, the saffron-robed monks, and the merit-making rhythm of festivals shape daily life. Older animist beliefs persist alongside, in spirit houses outside homes and offerings to local guardians. Hinduism's older imprint survives in the Angkor temples and in the Ramayana, retold in Khmer as the Reamker.

Classical Khmer dance, with its slow, precise hand gestures and the apsara figures drawn straight from the temple walls, was nearly wiped out under the Khmer Rouge and painstakingly revived. Shadow puppetry, the pinpeat orchestra, and silk weaving are other traditions that survived by a thread.

Social life places weight on family, seniority, and saving face; greetings use the palms-together sampeah, with the height of the hands showing respect. The Khmer Rouge years are an ever-present undertone — almost every family lost members — and are marked at memorial sites and a day of remembrance.

Around two million people live in Phnom Penh, the riverside capital, which has grown fast and unevenly, with new towers beside markets and monasteries. Siem Reap, next to Angkor, lives almost entirely off tourism. Most Cambodians, though, are rural, farming rice in the plains around the Tonlé Sap and the Mekong.

The Tonlé Sap lake itself is central to life: it reverses its flow with the seasons, swelling enormously in the wet season and feeding one of the world's most productive inland fisheries, with whole villages built on stilts or floating on the water.

The economy runs on garment manufacturing, tourism, construction, and agriculture, with heavy Chinese investment in recent years — nowhere more visibly than in Sihanoukville, transformed and then partly hollowed out by a casino boom and bust. Wages are low, and many young people work abroad in Thailand.

Khmer cooking is subtler and less fiery than its neighbours', built on rice, freshwater fish, and fresh herbs, with a base note of prahok, a pungent fermented fish paste. The national dish is fish amok, a mild coconut-and-lemongrass curry steamed in a banana leaf until it sets to a mousse.

Everyday meals include samlor korko (a thick vegetable and fish soup), lok lak (stir-fried marinated beef with a lime-and-pepper dip), grilled fish with green mango, and nom banh chok, rice noodles under a green fish gravy eaten for breakfast. Kampot pepper, from the southern coast, is prized worldwide.

Street food and markets serve num pang sandwiches (a French-colonial legacy), grilled skewers, fresh spring rolls, tropical fruit, and, for the adventurous, fried insects and balut. Sugar-palm juice and iced coffee with condensed milk are the standard drinks.

The Angkor Archaeological Park, outside Siem Reap, is the reason most people come: Angkor Wat itself, the giant carved faces of the Bayon at Angkor Thom, the tree-swallowed ruins of Ta Prohm, and dozens of other temples spread across a forested area the size of a city, best explored over two or three days.

Phnom Penh holds the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, the National Museum of Khmer sculpture, and the two essential sites for understanding the recent past: the Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison museum and the Choeung Ek "killing fields" memorial.

Beyond the temples, the Tonlé Sap's floating and stilted villages, the colonial riverside town of Kampot and the pepper farms and old hill station of Bokor nearby, the beaches and islands off Sihanoukville and Koh Rong, and the remote forests and waterfalls of Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri in the northeast round out the country.