It’s probably the biggest religious complex in the world: For me strolling through the temples of Angkor Wat, the chance to suddenly discover a mossy Buddha squeezed between giant fig trees or set in the endless ocean of carved stone, is one of the great travel experiences I ever head. When I was visiting Cambodia for the first time in 2001 my travel buddy and me had jungle and temples almost for ourselves. Monks in orange robes were still living between the ruins, as were remnants of the Khmer Rouge in the outskirts. On my visit with my wife eight years later the terrorists of Khmer Rouge had been substituted by tourists. Instead we had the pleasure of staying in King Sihanouk’s former guesthouse, a villa blending Modernist forms and Angkorian grandeur. In Cambodian history the King has been quite a character, to say the least. During his lifetime, Cambodia was under various forms of government, from French colonial rule, a Japanese puppet state, an independent kingdom, a republic, the terrorist Khmer Rouge regime, a Vietnamese-backed communist regime to eventually another kingdom. 1970 the King himself had been toppled by the Khmer Rouge,later he allied with them. Beside politics Prince Sihanouk also seemed to enjoy the good life: I stumbled again over him in 2016 when I was visiting Kep, a cute fishing village on bordering the Gulf of Thailand, called during French colonial rule in Indochina „Kep-sur-Mer“. In the 50s King Sihanouk became, as Cambodian high society. a Kep fan, too. My weekend trip during a business trip in Phnom Penh to Kep was worth alone for its spectacular signature dish, fried crab with local pepper. In Kep I had the additional pleasure of staying at „Knai Bang Chatt“, the Modernist three-villa ensemble designed by a student of Le Corbusier, consisting of the Blue, Red and Grey Villas. Tragically Kep became a stronghold of the Khmer Rouge, too. Knai Bang Chatt, which translates „the rainbow that revolves around the sun“, fell into decay.

In Buddhis a rainbow forms the gloriole around the head of Buddha.