Kampong Thom

The province was the heartland of Chenla, the Khmer state that preceded Angkor. At Sambor Prei Kuk, north-east of the present town, King Isanavarman I built the capital of Ishanapura in the early 7th century, a city of brick sanctuaries with carved lintels and octagonal towers set among trees, some of them still standing and some swallowed by roots. It is among the oldest substantial temple groups in Cambodia and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017.

When power moved north-west to Angkor, this stretch of the plain remained on the road between the capitals and the great lake, and Angkorian kings left smaller works here, among them the temple of Prasat Kuha Nokor and the shrines on Phnom Santuk. The town itself is much younger: it grew as a market and river crossing on the Stung Sen and became a French administrative seat, with a handful of colonial offices near the bridge and a road that later became National Road 6.

The 1970s were harsh across the province, which saw heavy bombing, early Khmer Rouge control and the forced labour of the years that followed; Saloth Sar, who took the name Pol Pot, was born in a village in the province in the 1920s. Rebuilding was slow, and the province stayed poor and agricultural. The paving of the main road in the 2000s brought steady traffic between the capital and Siem Reap, and the recognition of Sambor Prei Kuk has since drawn a modest but growing number of visitors.

Life in the province is organised around the pagoda and the rice year. Monks collect alms at dawn, temple committees run the festivals, and the main gatherings are Khmer New Year in April, when Phnom Santuk and the town's pagodas fill with families, and Pchum Ben in the autumn, when rice is offered for the dead before first light. Weddings and ordinations are large, loud village affairs with amplified music that carries for kilometres.

Craft work supplements farming across the province. The traditional Khmer crafts — textiles, mat weaving, silverwork, stone carving, lacquer and ceramics — are practised in the villages, and silk is raised and woven in Santuk district, south-east of the town, where the sacred hill of Phnom Santuk stands. Basketry and palm-sugar making are village trades elsewhere in the province.

The province is also known for the shadow of its history — Sambor Prei Kuk's antiquity, and a Khmer Rouge past that is discussed carefully and rarely with strangers. Manners follow the national pattern: the sampeah greeting with palms together, respect for age and for monks, modest dress at pagodas, shoes removed at the door, and hospitality offered quickly to visitors who arrive in a village.

Kampong Thom is a small provincial capital of a few tens of thousands of people, strung between the river and the highway. The day begins before six at the market and the pagodas, business is done in the morning, the afternoon is quiet under the heat, and the evening belongs to the riverside and the food stalls. Traffic through town is constant, as buses and lorries between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap pass on the main road.

The province lives from rice, above all, with cassava, maize, sugar palms, fishing on the Stung Sen and the Tonlé Sap, and cattle in the drier districts. The town supplies the administration, the hospital, the schools and the market that the surrounding districts depend on, and a small tourist trade serves people visiting the temples. Handicrafts and silk raising add income in the villages to the south.

Poverty is higher here than in the cities, and many young people leave for work in Phnom Penh's garment factories, on construction sites or across the border in Thailand, sending money home. Irregular rainfall, flooding along the Stung Sen and debt from microloans are common worries, and improvements to roads, electricity and water supply have arrived unevenly across the districts.

Freshwater fish is the base of the cooking, from the Stung Sen and from the Tonlé Sap to the west: grilled over charcoal, fried with garlic, dried, or fermented into prahok in the dry season, when the paste that flavours half the country's dishes is made in bulk. Samlor korko, the thick soup of fish and whatever vegetables are in season, is the village dish, and fish amok, steamed with coconut and the lemongrass paste called kroeung, appears in restaurants.

Breakfast is kuy teav, the pork-broth rice-noodle soup with herbs and lime, or bai sach chrouk, grilled marinated pork over broken rice with pickles. Nom banh chok, cold rice noodles under a green fish gravy with raw vegetables, is sold in the mornings from baskets. Beef lok lak with a lime and black-pepper dip and Khmer curries thickened with coconut fill the roadside restaurants that feed passing buses.

The province is sugar-palm country, and the tall palms standing in the rice fields are tapped for sap that is boiled into palm sugar, sold in cakes and jars at the market and used in desserts such as num ansom, sticky rice cakes wrapped in banana leaf. Palm juice, sugar-cane juice and strong iced coffee with condensed milk are the everyday drinks, alongside Cambodian lager in the evening.