We made it back to the bustling, dusty, smoggy capital of Phnom Penh. There are a lot of challenges here, Cambodia is home to the most NGOs of any country in the world. Institutionalized violence has left huge scars on the country and its physical and cultural landscapes. Conversations about history, landscape, architecture, art, and planning inevitably involve a distinction of before-and-after the cultural cleansing of the Khmer Rouge.

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March 23rd I took off for Phnom Penh to spend the term with professor Ben Spencer of the University of Washington, and five other graduate students in landscape architecture (more about that later). After landing, and going through the oddly casual Cambodian visa and customs procedure, I dropped most of my baggage at the professor’s house and hit the road with two other students for Kampot on the Preaek Tuek Chhu River. It is a more rural city and province known for their pepper farming!

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