When Portuguese trader, Diogo do Couto, reached Angkor in 1550, he knew the vast temple complex was once the capital of the Mekong region’s largest-ever kingdom.
Some 300 years before his visit, the Khmer Empire stretched from Myanmar to the Mekong Delta, and commanded much of Laos and Thailand. But do Couto’s expedition had to hack through jungle to uncover the abandoned, vine-smothered ruins, where a million people once lived.