​On a small scrap of paper headed Guest House, Romchang, I jotted down the following:
 
            Bamboo train
            Ancient House
            Fruit Bats
            Bat Cave
            Banan Temple
            Battambang Statue
 
My travel companion had fallen and injured her knee. After seeing she was resting and safe, I thought I might engage a tangible tour guide to show me something of Battambang, a regional town in the Northwest. Like Mr Vanna’s carefully displayed assortment of books, each place gathers and presents that which might be tradeable. The special places, modest or magnificent, with which to ply the tourist trade. Commercial, certainly, yet not without dignity and honour. People must live. The list above comprised the local equivalent of the grand tour.

​Just for now, I want to write of Ms Bun Roeung’s Ancient House. I’d been struck by the style of Cambodian houses. The local equivalent of McMansions were two or three stories and featured long windows in a range of Monet shades. Chandeliers were in favour. Ostentatious, but not unattractive. Far more appealing, though, were the traditional houses built on simple lines usually on stilts. The older ones tended to be weathered timber, the newer ones in a delicious array of colours that were an antidote to the greige plague of my hometown. Like little jewel boxes. I was curious: was the stilt design protection against flooding or a form of air conditioning?

​In a country whose crown jewel in Angkor Wat, the proud centre of the Khmer Empire which lasted for six centuries, the term ancient raises certain expectations. The tree-surrounded house I was delivered to was of human dimension – a pleasing timber construction that would meet the tenets of the Arts and Crafts ideal. Leaving my shoes at the bottom of a flight of concrete stairs I went up and was greeted by Ms Bun Roeung herself. A set of miniature models on a veranda table displayed the variants of classic Cambodian architecture. She answered my unspoken query by announcing that the design could serve as flood protection, temperature regulation, as well as protection from poisonous animals (I hadn’t thought of that!).

Moving inside to the large main room I was struck with the silkiness of the wide timber floorboards and the uncluttered placement of furniture. Again, it recalled the William Morris maxim “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”. The beauty was unquestionable. The usefulness both immediately evident and more subtle. My attention was drawn to two mirrors: one large and one small. “Notice,” said Ms Roeung, “how they are placed so that you can observe who approaches the house, while remaining unobserved yourself”.  Noted.
 

“The house was built in 1920,” she remarked. I was startled. The Ancient House was eight years younger than my own home in Fremantle. Time dilated. The Theory of Relativity 101. Three generations lived in Ms Roeung’s house, three in my own. I sometimes give a mock house tour for our guests, as three generations is time enough to accrue some interesting tales. And ghosts. It is my infinite, unearned good fortune that my ghosts are benign. 

​“The house belonged to my aunt, a Professor of Literature” (a calling not very distant from my own). So much relational information. She went on, “More than a hundred members of my family were killed by the Khmer Rouge. My aunt survived and chose to come back.” Time stopped. Viewed across the gulf of rupture, the term “ancient” took on a new meaning. There was the time before and the time after and an immeasurable gap between.
 

She left me alone, then, in that room. I don’t know what groups of visitors do at this point. Whisper? Look at the furniture or out the window? I looked at the family portraits hanging on one wall and did the only thing that I could think to do: brought my hands together in sampeah, the Cambodian gesture of greeting and respect.

​When I left the original part of the house, I was shown the kitchen, which was the only section that was new. It had been commandeered by the Khmer Rouge and used to supply local troops. A more compelling reason for remodelling than the hunger for novelty, tear-down-and-replace that plagues my street.
 
Downstairs, Ms Roeung seemed a little less remote (had I been observed, unobserved?) She asked me where I was from. When I answered “Australia” she replied “Queensland?” I hadn’t mentioned it, but I guess I wasn’t the first person to observe the similarities between the stilt design and the traditional Queenslander. Motes of commonality floating in the vast space-time continuum that separates her history and culture from my own. Occasionally, they catch the light.

There’s no tangible reason I should happen to be in a hotel less than a stone’s throw from a dance academy that warmly welcomed me. What are the odds?
 
Similarly, there was no particular reason to breakfast at Sister Srey’s (Sister Girl’s) Café ​beside the river in Siem Reap. Not the first time at any rate. Once having tasted the quality of the food and coffee returning several times was quite explicable. But there was something deeper that drew me back. On the first morning I noticed on one wall a painting detailing the major landmine sites across the world. A map of buried terror. On the wall directly opposite a poster with the image of a masked and caped animal: HeroRAT.

​I discovered that the café supported a project called Apopo. This non-profit was set up with the extremely ambitious, but not impossible, task of removing all landmines in Cambodia. Given that Cambodia has the dolorous distinction of being the most heavily land mined country in the world, even the thought of trying moved me to tears. A small postcard on the noticeboard alerted me to the possibility of visiting the project centre and I resolved to do so.

​Just outside Sister Srey’s was a tiny stall where my travel companion and I purchased several carefully wrapped used books. Tok Vanna, the proprietor, had no hands. With the books came a photocopied leaflet that told Mr Vanna’s story, based on an interview with BBC journalist Kate McGeown. (I use the name from the leaflet not the interview.) When the landmine took his hands, the outlook was bleak. Suicide seemed the most viable option . . .  yet the man I met was  lively and cheerful. He sustained a livelihood and a family. It was a long way from the days of despair when a landmine exploded all hope of a good future.

​Another whim of fate. The day I visited Angkor Wat, we drove via a different route back to Siem Reap. On a long stretch of country road I saw the sign for the Apopo Visitor Centre, and we stopped. Seeing firsthand how these African pouched rats are used in clearing landmines and returning land and peace to the communities was extraordinary. As was the respect and care verging on reverence the carers had for the animals. No rat has ever died in this work. Land that would otherwise take three days to clear can be declared safe in thirty minutes. The prospect of clearing Cambodia of landmines by 2025 suddenly seemed realistic. I wept.

How do you come back from hell? If Apopo shows the path writ large, Mr Vanna’s story is a map in miniature of the possibility of restoration. Without intangible guides, who amongst us could navigate the narrow and perilous  path back to hope?