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But since the end of the civil war in Cambodia, and the general decline into lawlessness, many of the temples have fallen victim to looting, as poor villagers seek to make some money by selling statues and carvings to middlemen who smuggle them across the border into Thailand. Ironically, the end of the war and the subsequent demining activities that have been carried out for humanitarian reasons have also made the looting easier -- before minefields made many of the temples too dangerous to approach.

Since 1992 Cambodian artifacts have been hemorrhaging across the Thai border, where they are taken to the antique shops in River City in Bangkok and fetch large sums of money. On the Cambodian side, there is heavy military involvement, which makes it hard for anyone to stop, since Prime Minister Hun Sen has effectively turned Cambodia into a military dictatorship these days. International pressure has begun to have some effect, however, and policing around the most famous sites has been stepped up. But the outlying temples outside the main Angkor area are still being systematically pillaged. As we found out.

After a two-hour drive by pickup truck north from Siem Reap, the TIME team arrived at Phnom Kulen, the mountainous outcrop from where much of the sandstone to build the Angkor monuments was quarried. At the base of Phnom Kulen is a waterfall with carvings in the stones under the surface of the water‹very charming, and very popular with the locals who come here on the weekends to swim.

But across the river were stands selling all sorts of things from the jungle -- a small loris (bit like a small monkey) roasted and touted as a cure for stomach ailments, deer paws, various roots, and small green ceramic bowls. Our guide, Pheng Samoeun, nearly choked when he saw the bowls. They were 1,000-years old and from a kiln on top of the mountain. The seller wanted 10,000 riels for each bowl -- a mere $2.50. We asked the seller whether he was afraid of breaking the law, and he said he didn't know there was any law. He had just dug them up in the jungle.

We also took motorbikes with us, and rode them another hour into the jungle, when we came across huge pits with broken pottery shards strewn around. There were also pots stacked up ready to be carted away to the markets. The entire area is supposedly under military control -- you even have to pay $20 as a foreigner to get into the area‹but there was no policing of the site at all.

As we left, we got caught in a downpour -- but it didn't wash away the bad taste of such blatant ravaging of a country's cultural heritage. The only question that we couldn't answer was, Who was worse? The military allowing this to happen, or the eventual buyers of the artifacts in the west? Cambodia's trauma continues.


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