In Siem Reap, just a 10 minute walk through the mayhem of traffic and over broken pavement tiles, is one of my favourite places on earth. It’s a monastery called Wat Damnak, an oasis in the middle of Siem Reap chaos. Wat Damnak is home to a school, a dormitory for monks, a sewing school sponsored by one of the 5-star hotels, and the Centre for Khmer Studies. The centre has a library where you can always see dozens of teenagers reading and congregating, and perhaps by next year they will have opened their childrens’ room where I’ve been asked to run a workshop or two. In some inexplicable way, this place means Siem Reap to me. I even set an important scene from the next book there. And having created it anew as a fictional place, returning to see it as it really is was a fascinating experience. It was how I re-imagined it to be, and also not. But I don’t think that matters. There is something very magical about the place, and it lives both in the “real world” and in my own imagination. Of course, my photos never do justice, but they’re the best I can do:

One of several shrines

An array of stupa

The Centre for Khmer Studies

The Pagoda