Takeo

The province claims some of the oldest history in Cambodia. Angkor Borei, on the floodplain north-east of the present town, is believed to have been a major settlement of Funan, the trading state that flourished in the lower Mekong delta in the first centuries AD and traded as far as India and China. Canals linked it to the sea and to other settlements, brick foundations and water tanks survive within its old walls, and the sculptures found at nearby Phnom Da are among the earliest masterpieces of Khmer art, giving their name to a distinct style.

Khmer power later moved north, but the area remained settled and important enough for Angkorian kings to build here: the temple on Phnom Chisor was built by Suryavarman I in the 11th century and Ta Prohm of Bati under Jayavarman VII at the end of the 12th. The modern town of Doun Kaev grew as a market and canal port on the edge of the floodplain and became the provincial seat under the French, who cut and improved the waterways that still carry boats to Angkor Borei.

The 20th century was hard. The province lay close to the Vietnamese border during the war years, and under the Khmer Rouge it was part of the movement's south-western zone, whose commander, Ta Mok, was born in the province and built his power there. After 1979 the province returned to rice farming and weaving, and it has remained one of the poorer and least visited parts of the country, its ancient sites better known to archaeologists than to travellers.

Takeo is a strongly rural province, and its culture is that of the rice village: the pagoda as the centre of community life, monks on alms rounds at dawn, and festivals that gather families from the fields. Khmer New Year in April and Pchum Ben in the autumn are the great occasions, and the hill temples at Phnom Chisor and Tonle Bati fill with picnickers on holidays.

The province is known across Cambodia for silk, and holds roughly two-thirds of the country's weavers. Households weave beneath their stilt houses on wooden looms, producing the patterned hol cloth made by tying and dyeing the threads before weaving, along with plain silk and cotton kramas, the checked scarves worn for every purpose. Weaving has been revived since the 1990s with help from craft organisations and is an important source of income for women in the villages.

Memory of the Khmer Rouge years is close to the surface here, and is spoken of carefully and rarely with strangers. Manners follow the national pattern and are formal in a village way: the sampeah greeting, respect for age, modest dress, shoes off at the door, and food and drink pressed on guests. Visitors who are patient and unhurried are treated with warmth.

Doun Kaev is a town of about 43,000 people at the 2019 census, serving a large farming province. The day starts before six at the market and the pagodas, business slows through the heat of the afternoon, and the canal bank and the food stalls fill at dusk. Traffic is light except on the highway, and much of the town is still single-storey wooden and concrete houses with gardens.

Rice dominates the economy, grown on the floodplain and in the fields around the hills, with fish from the seasonal waters, palm sugar tapped from the sugar palms that stand in the paddies, cattle and vegetables. Silk weaving brings in money in the villages, and the town provides the province's administration, hospital, schools and market. Its closeness to Phnom Penh means many families have relatives working there, and garment factories in the province employ others.

The pressures are familiar across rural Cambodia: irregular rainfall and flooding, falling fish catches, debt from microloans, and young people leaving for factory work in the capital or jobs in Thailand. Tourism is small — a few guesthouses, boatmen who take visitors across to Angkor Borei, and a museum that sees a handful of people a day — but the province's archaeology keeps researchers coming back.

The floodplain provides. Freshwater fish is grilled over charcoal, fried, dried in the sun or fermented into prahok in the dry season, and eaten with rice at nearly every meal. Samlor korko, the thick mixed soup of fish and vegetables, is the everyday village dish, while fish amok, steamed in banana leaf with coconut and the lemongrass paste called kroeung, is what restaurants cook for guests. Small fish, snails and river prawns appear at the market in season.

Breakfast is kuy teav, the pork-broth rice-noodle soup, or bai sach chrouk, grilled marinated pork over broken rice with pickled cucumber. Nom banh chok, cold rice noodles with a green fish gravy and a heap of raw vegetables, is sold from baskets in the morning and is at its best in the countryside. Beef lok lak with a lime and black-pepper dip and coconut-thickened Khmer curries fill out restaurant menus.

Sugar palms are everywhere in the province, and their sap is boiled down into palm sugar sold in discs and jars at the market, sweetening desserts such as num ansom, sticky rice cakes wrapped in banana leaf, and num chak kachan, layered steamed cakes. Palm juice, sugar-cane juice and iced coffee with condensed milk are drunk through the day, with Cambodian lager in the evening.