I should begin by telling you who we are, and what we do.
My husband Lang is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide. I asked him to allow me to write his survivor’s account because it was the most incredible story I had ever heard in my life. He consented because he wanted people to know that what happened in Cambodia can happen again - anywhere. Over a period of ten years we wrote The Smell of Water and the sequel, No Front Line. And that’s all we ever intended to write.
I’d first met him in 2001. He’d come to the U. S. at fourteen, as a refugee. Twenty-two years later, he had never gone back. And half of his family was still in Cambodia. In 2003, I took him back. Watching out of the corner of my eye every minute for signs of PTSD. He was elated to be reunited with the aunt who had raised him. He did just fine.
We began going “home” every year. And at some point I realized that Cambodian silk was disappearing. I wrote A Pocket Guide to Cambodian Silk, a consumer guide intended to increase sales to the 4.5 million tourists who visit Angkor Wat each year. And that’s the last book I ever intended to write.
By this time I was retired, from a career in software engineering. But Lang was still working. I’d been a South Asian Studies major in college and had wanted to see Angkor Wat, but Cambodia had been closed by the Khmer Rouge. Now, Lang encouraged me to spend time in Siem Reap.
I soon found that most Angkorian scholars had been men studying men; except for Sappho Marchal in the 1920s, no one had studied the women. What little had been written about them by other scholars was grossly inaccurate; there are seven groups of women at Angkor Wat, and only two had been identified correctly. And then I read what had been written about the queens. Sloppy scholarship, and so disrespectful! I got MAD.
But MAD is good. It gets you going. I identified the other five groups of women, made discovery after discovery, and wrote Through the Eyes of a Queen - the Women of the Royal Court at Angkor. And in the course of all this, something changed…
Sydney Schanberg, the man behind the movie The Killing Fields, wrote something to the effect that once you become a war correspondent, you can never go back. You become so addicted to the adrenaline rush that you can’t do anything else. Working as a researcher is like that. Especially when you’re independent, so can study what you think is important. And can publish in a country where free speech is protected, so you can write candidly about your discoveries. Research is hard work. And in Cambodia, it’s really tough. The relentless heat. The constant threat of disease. The biting insects won’t kill you, but the snakes will. And I’ve had so many scholars slam the door in my face that my nose is crooked. But then you make that once-in-a-lifetime discovery…
I was trying to identify the twenty-four women who guard the inner sanctum on the highest level of Angkor Wat. I traced what they’re called today back to the original Sanskrit, and discovered that they’re yakshi. I then compared them to Indian yakshi, and compared their attributes. Positive ID.
And then you make another once-in-a-lifetime discovery. I’d looked at the six women following the queens in the Southern Gallery for months, and finally, through nine centuries of erosion, had been able to make out the wheel of a cart. These women were transporting food to the queens’ ceremony to worship Vishnu. Like Zhou Daguan’s “Servants in Carts”.
That split second when you realize what you’ve discovered - that’s addictive. My most recent discovery came when an Indian fashion designer advised me that the Angkorian brocade patterns I was showing her just might be Ashavali patterns. I got on the Internet, pulled up a website selling Ashavali saris, and saw not only the same patterns, but the same combinations of patterns. I flew to India, did more research, and wrote What the Queens Wore - the Silk of Angkor.
But how had ikat come to Cambodia? Another trip to India…
And where is Lang? Holding down the fort at home, licking his chops for his retirement!
On to what follows… We want you to read our books, but we wrote those books so that you could learn of our discoveries. This section of our website is a shortcut for you.
Some of our discoveries are concepts. Because these concepts govern our more tangible discoveries, we’ve listed them first.
Next are our most astonishing discoveries. Those that made us suck in our breath when we suddenly realized what we were looking at.
Next are our discoveries that we were able to prove. There’s no greater thrill than to finally learn that you did get it right!
Next are those discoveries that we’re still trying to prove. And if you have information that will help us, please click the Contacts tab and send us an e-mail. If we use your information we’ll credit you, of course!
And last are those discoveries that we will never be able to prove. Those that will remain a mystery forever.
We’ll add to this section throughout September of 2025, so keep coming back to check what’s new!