Memories are made of this

After reading this article, it reminds me of why I keep returning to Cambodia. I've always described to people that I knew I needed to return here after visiting in early 2003 because it always felt like I left home and needed to return. It's like the song "I left my heart in San Francisco" except I left mine in Cambodia.

Steve Levitt with a girl with no hands in Siem Reap, 1990.

Friday, 01 October 2010
By Steve Levitt

I AM planning my return to Siem Reap from my small home in Canberra, Australia, rifling through my old passports as an aid to a failing memory. The passports tell me that I have been coming to Cambodia regularly for just over 20 years.

First I came for adventure and stories as a photojournalist. Then as a communications officer with a global aid agency. Then as an uncle with a favoured niece. Now I’ll return as a father with his eldest son.

No other country appears so often in my packed passports, and no place other than Siem Reap has such a hold to keep drawing me back.

Perhaps it is because Cambodia, more than any other country, is never the same place twice, and because Siem Reap seems to change by the minute.

Read the rest of the article here.