The Enigma of Cambodia's Abandoned Pyramids with Caleb Andrew
A forgotten kingdom, an abandoned pyramid, and a stolen priceless artifact, it sounds like the setting for an electrifying adventure – and it is – but what we’re talking about today is the true story of Cambodia’s modern history.
Caleb Andrew joins me. He’s an author, lawyer, and world traveler whose archaeological thrillers bring hidden histories to life. Growing up in Cambodia and living across Botswana, South Africa, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, he weaves his global experiences into pulse-pounding adventures—like The Koh Ker Conspiracy, which we’re talking about today.
Takeaways:
- The intricate history of Cambodia, and its evolution over decades.
- Artifact smuggling and its historical implications in Cambodia.
- We discuss the transformative experiences of living in Cambodia and how it shapes their writing.
- Why is Cambodia's rich history often overshadowed by more prominent ancient cultures like Greece and Egypt?
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Transcript
A forgotten kingdom, an abandoned pyramid, and a stolen priceless artifact.
Speaker A:That sounds like the setting for an electrifying adventure.
Speaker A:And it is.
Speaker A:Because what we're talking about today is the true story of Cambodia's modern history.
Speaker A:Hey, I'm Luke.
Speaker A:I'm an author of archaeological adventure novels.
Speaker A:I, I travel the world looking for stories to put into my books and share with you right here on the Adventure Story podcast.
Speaker A:Today, I'm joined by Caleb Andrew.
Speaker A:Caleb's an author, a lawyer, and a world traveler whose archaeological thrillers bring hidden histories to life.
Speaker A:Growing up in Cambodia and living across Botswana, South Africa, Switzerland and the Netherlands, he weaves his global experiences into pulse pounding adventures like his book the the Co Kei Conspiracy, which we're talking about today.
Speaker B:Thank you for having me.
Speaker A:Oh, it's great to talk to you.
Speaker A:So tell me, what made you want to tell the story of the Koke Conspiracy?
Speaker B:Well, when I was 13 years old, actually, my family moved to Cambodia, to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which was a huge change.
Speaker B:I was sort of, you know, from Ohio in the United States.
Speaker B:And then my family picked up and moved when I was 13, just sort of finishing middle school, entering high school, and I lived there for five years and it really changed my life.
Speaker B:Like living there changed my life.
Speaker B:Learning Cambodian, the language changed my life.
Speaker B:Sort of seeing the country develop changed my life.
Speaker B:It ended up defining my career.
Speaker B:And eventually when I sat down to write my first novel, it ended up defining what that novel would be about, which was the incredible history of Cambodia, the ancient history, but also sort of weaving in there some of the modern history that people are sort of less familiar with.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And it's a really fun adventure story.
Speaker A:That's what I loved about your book, is that you've taken all of this history like you've just described and sort of weaved an adventure into it.
Speaker A:Was that a challenge?
Speaker A:Was that difficult to have that adventure thread running through all that, all that history?
Speaker B:In some, in some ways, yes.
Speaker B:On the other hand, I feel like, especially as a, as a 13, 14, 15 year old boy, like going to these temples in, you know, in Siem Reap, but also the temple that that really the, the book is about, which is this pyramid temple really in the middle of the jungle in sort of northern Cambodia.
Speaker B: to these places in the early: Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And I Can I feel like I was that, that 13 year old boy who was running around these old temples, you know, these big temples, sort of pretending that I was Indiana Jones, you know.
Speaker B:And so then when I sat down to write it, it wasn't so hard to think like, how would I make this into an adventure story.
Speaker B:I think more was to sort of figure out the actual structure of it and say, okay, well, how am I going to have, what's my main character gonna be and how is he gonna get involved and how am I gonna make it about the ancient history of Cambodia?
Speaker B:Because I didn't want to write like a historical novel.
Speaker B:I wanted to write a modern novel that was really fun, that was fast paced, that people would like and enjoy, that had a lot of adventure, but that also where also people learned a lot about the history of Cambodia and about Cambodia as a country.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And so that's when I sort of stuck on this idea of, okay, what if someone is trying to steal something from Cambodia?
Speaker B:An artifact, right?
Speaker B:So, and that kind of then developed into the story, you know, from the beginning.
Speaker B:But I knew from the beginning it would be about the Kokei Temple because when I went there and I was 15, I felt like I was the only person in, you know, miles at this temple.
Speaker B:And it was just incredible, the feeling of being there and then mystery and climbing to the top of the temple.
Speaker B:At the time there wasn't sort of even like these.
Speaker B:Now they have like wooden staircases that go to the top.
Speaker B:At the time you're just scrambling up the side of these cracked and ancient broken steps, which if you read the book, that's how it's one of the ways it opens, right?
Speaker B:And then you get to the top and there's just sort of like debris and amazing carvings that are broken into pieces.
Speaker B:And then you can see across the jungle all around you.
Speaker B:It's a really, it was a really amazing experience.
Speaker A:I absolutely love that and I love your description there are the steps, because I find myself when we walk up steps of temples in Cambodia and all across the world thinking about all of the other people who have walked in the same way, in the same footsteps, and you can actually see where they're.
Speaker A:It feels, there's sort of a goosebumps moment where you can see how their feet have worn away the stone in the same way.
Speaker A:You are that sort of thread that passes through time.
Speaker A:I love that you alluded there then to the artifact smuggling.
Speaker A:And I wanted to touch on that and ask you really about the real world events that you have used to tell your story?
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:So I, when I first sat down to write the book, it wasn't really big news.
Speaker B:I knew about it and I knew that Cambodia had sort of, say, a problem, but that people had been sort of stealing and smuggling artifacts out of Cambodia in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s.
Speaker B:And this had been a big issue, especially as Cambodia went through sort of years of instability.
Speaker B: You know, the genocide in the: Speaker B:And in those decades of conflict and instability, people really took advantage of that and they stole things and they took artifacts and they moved them all around the world.
Speaker B:There were these really, you know, and so actually what happened was I sat down to write the first draft.
Speaker B:I wrote the first draft.
Speaker B: cause Cambodia in the sort of: Speaker B:And as this kept happening, as they kept talking into these different countries and museums, there started to come out that, oh, there was a really common thread and there ended up being really a couple people, but one person in particular who was then indicted by the U.S.
Speaker B:attorney in New York for being involved in artifact smuggling.
Speaker B:And he was a Bangkok based antiquities dealer named Douglas Latchford.
Speaker B:And it's become this big news item where him and his sort of cronies, you could say, were involved in buying artifacts that have been smuggled across the border into Thailand and then selling them, oftentimes without the proper documents, to museums in Europe, museums in the US and that, I think, really stood out to me.
Speaker B:And I actually, it helped me.
Speaker B:I'd already written the book, but it helped me go back and say, how do I even spend more time highlighting this and bringing in other pieces of that, right?
Speaker B:And then at the end of the book, I included a note about both on the actual history of the site that I'm writing about, but also on the trafficking in Khmer in Cambodia and art.
Speaker B:And there's also really a couple amazing people who've been doing work on this for years and years.
Speaker B:There's a lawyer in Cambodia named Bradley Gordon, who's still working on it quite a bit.
Speaker B:And there's an NGO in the US called the Antiquities Coalition, which sort of works all across the world with plenty of other places where antiquities are being stolen, including situations of war.
Speaker B:But the director of that, Tess Davis, did a lot of work on Cambodia actually.
Speaker B:And so she also has a lot of really great stuff.
Speaker B:And I talk about both of these people in that, in that little annex.
Speaker B:But yeah, it's big business.
Speaker B:You know, even now, today, antiquity smuggling is big business.
Speaker B:It makes a lot of money.
Speaker B:It's cross border.
Speaker B:So it oftentimes involves organized crime or, you know, sort of even in situations of war.
Speaker B:We'll see militias are taking artifacts and then trying to sell them across the border for cash that they can use to buy weaponry and that sort of thing.
Speaker B:But I think it's really interesting to see how Cambodia is handling that as a country that's now come out of these decades of war and is saying, because they also had such a rich.
Speaker B:Not that other countries don't, but they had such a wealth of artifacts that could be taken.
Speaker B:I mean, hundreds, hundreds of temples all around the country with incredible carvings all out of stone statues.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Massive building projects.
Speaker B:And so I think a lot of that was.
Speaker B:And also very.
Speaker B:Because of, I don't know if it's because of the climate or whatever else.
Speaker B:A lot of it was very well preserved.
Speaker B:So I think it became sort of also sought after.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:People liked having the statues of the Apsara dancers, which are the beautiful sort of women with the headdresses, or the statues of the different sort of Hindu deities that came from these temples.
Speaker B:So it's still a real issue, but there's a lot of work that's been done on it, which is great to see.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:And there's some interesting documentaries I watched in research for my book.
Speaker A:I remember where that told the story like you've just described, of them being in museums, you know, very government funded, very large museums and above the fireplace of certain, certain very wealthy people and all these things.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:Yeah, very.
Speaker B:Actually, sorry to interrupt, but I think one of my favorite stories is because I think it's so, it's just so, like, it's also so indicative of our modern world.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Is that there was basically this whole collection of about 20 to 30 really beautiful statues and Khmer artifacts.
Speaker B:And how they were found was.
Speaker B:It was sort of a wealthy individual in the United States and his family did a shoot for like a magazine in their house.
Speaker B:And so they're all posing in these different rooms and people started looking through them and going, I think that's from Cambodia.
Speaker B:I think that's from Cambodia.
Speaker B:And then that actually developed into this sort of repatriation claim from the Cambodian government in cooperation with, I think, with some attorneys in the US And.
Speaker B:And those artifacts all end up are going back to Cambodia.
Speaker B:But such a funny, you know, where someone just looking at the magazine and they're like, wait a minute.
Speaker B:I think these.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:That's mad, isn't it?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:You just think that had been.
Speaker A:That could still be there today, or would certainly still be there today had that not have been noticed.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:So to sort of move on from that many.
Speaker A:There's so many adventure novels, including mine, really.
Speaker A:And I've written one in Cambodia, or set in Cambodia, as that are written by outsiders looking in on a place.
Speaker A:You know, I go for two, three weeks to a country and I have it in my mind that that's where my next novel is going to.
Speaker A:Going to be.
Speaker A:And that's sort of the way it is.
Speaker A:I can't.
Speaker A:The time is finite.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:You can't spend all of that time in all the places I want to set books.
Speaker A:But for you, does spending.
Speaker A:Or does having spent that time, all that time in Cambodia sort of change your perspective on writing this kind of story?
Speaker B:Yeah, totally.
Speaker B:I think it does.
Speaker B:Although I will say, you know, and that we talked a little bit about this before.
Speaker B:Before that, that when I started writing a book about Cambodia, I went to look for other novels set in Cambodia, and I just didn't find a whole lot.
Speaker B:And the ones that I did, half of them, I felt like, didn't do a very good job describing the country.
Speaker B:But I did want to say I actually did not feel that way about your novel, the Lotus Code.
Speaker B:I did read it.
Speaker B:I thought you did a great job.
Speaker B:I thought you really did, you know, respected the country and.
Speaker B:And I thought you really were able to weave a lot of stuff together.
Speaker B:I was really impressed, to be honest, because I thought you'd only been there for three weeks, like that.
Speaker B:You did a really good job.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker B:But, yeah, but I think that.
Speaker B:But it definitely influences how I wrote the book.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:My own experiences and my understanding of the country and of the culture, in some ways it's restricting because it makes you feel like you really need to be super accurate.
Speaker B:You don't want to misrepresent the country.
Speaker B:You don't want to misrepresent the people or the history.
Speaker B:And There were times in my sort of writing journey where I had to remind myself that I was writing a creative novel and I could take some license, you know.
Speaker B:But at the same time, actually, this is maybe a funny story, but the first couple drafts that really, historically speaking, what would have been on top of the pyramid was, it was supposed to be this ginormous Shiva linga, which is a phallic statue that represents Shiva, sort of like 9 meters tall or something.
Speaker B:I mean, something incredibly huge.
Speaker B:It would have weighed so much.
Speaker B:It would have been made out of like granite, put on a pedestal or something potentially like a wood or bamboo structure that would have held it and that would have been on top and that would have symbolized like the godhood of the local king of the king of the Khmer Empire at that time.
Speaker B:But when in the first couple drafts I had my characters, I had the people who were stealing the artifact, stealing that artifact.
Speaker B:And eventually someone said, maybe you could do something a bit different.
Speaker B:Like, I don't think especially a Western reader is going to be a little bit hard.
Speaker B:It's going to be a little bit harder for them to pick up on why this big sort of phallic statue is important right from a cultural source, even though that's historically accurate.
Speaker B:And that's when I came up with, okay, well, how can we just basically do the same thing but then look a little bit.
Speaker B:Well, how do we, you know, use other parts of the history and the culture to sort of create creatively an object that then also.
Speaker B:Which actually ended up working out really well because I first created the sort of the object that the artifact.
Speaker B:And then I realized it had so many implications for how I could talk about the Khmer history, both modern and ancient.
Speaker B:And so it ended up being a really great little thing.
Speaker B:But yeah.
Speaker B:So back to your question.
Speaker B:I think in some ways it can be restricting.
Speaker B:In other ways I think it made me feel, and I've taken it forward in my writing as well.
Speaker B:When I write about places that I'm not as familiar with, I try really, really hard to read as much as I can to be respectful, to try and understand the places I'm talking about in the history.
Speaker B:Because I knew how much it irritated me when I would read books that got it so wrong, you know, that had sort of Cambodian people acting or thinking in ways that were just so clearly not Cambodian or were so clearly the way that, you know, if I was reading a book from like a, you know, a 50 year old white man in the US and I'm reading this Cambodian character and I'm like, this is how a 50 year old white man would act, not how a Cambodian character would act.
Speaker B:And that made that upset me a bit or like the history and they mischaracterized it.
Speaker B:I was like, it's not right.
Speaker B:So I think in that sense, I think it's driven me to be really, really accurate, but also driven me to want to try and highlight parts of the culture and the country and the people that I want people to know about and to understand better.
Speaker B:And that's a big part of why I wrote the book in the first place was I thought, I love this history, I love this country.
Speaker B:How can I do something that's really fun, that will still make people want to engage with it and understand it and maybe make people want to travel there and that sort of thing.
Speaker B:So I think it's influenced me in so many ways.
Speaker B:I mean also just in the characters and the places and everything, but definitely in those ways.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I think that comes across in your book that you've got a real sort of passion for the place and you want to, you want to signpost it, you want to advertise it, you know, and we've talked before we started recording about the next book in the series and you're saying that Cambodia will be a place in that as well.
Speaker A:So it's very much this whole series is going to be sort of cemented in Cambodia.
Speaker B:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker B:I think, I think actually this goes back to your point about how you said earlier something about so many books about being set in Greece or in Egypt or you know, so on, so on.
Speaker B:And these places are so like, so studied, so well known.
Speaker B:There's so much money that goes into grants for studying these places and there's just not nearly as much in.
Speaker B:In for.
Speaker B:In Cambodia.
Speaker B:But, but it has such a rich history and I thought it was really important to, to.
Speaker B:Yeah, basically to advertise that in a way.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:It did surprise me that there is so few sort of adventure thrillers in Cambodia, particularly because Tomb Raider was, was so sort of, perhaps almost not at fault.
Speaker A: odia on the map, you know, in: Speaker A:Was was made, you know, from Temple and these sorts of things.
Speaker A:It put, that, it put.
Speaker A:But yet there hasn't been this, this.
Speaker A:There just aren't the number of books that I think that think there should be.
Speaker A:So a big call out to all the other adventure novelists listening, you know, get your Cambodian book planned and written because they need to happen.
Speaker A:And there's so many stories that could be told about that.
Speaker B:Totally.
Speaker B:When.
Speaker B:Sorry, I think I kind of lost my point a second ago, but you were mentioning the theme kind of running through Cambodia for my novels.
Speaker B:I feel really passionate that this series will highlight Southeast Asia because I think that's an area of the country.
Speaker B:It's not just Cambodia.
Speaker B:I mean, Cambodia as well, but there's so much that's just not really known about some of these areas and temples and some really incredible history in Myanmar, in Thailand, in Laos as well.
Speaker B:Even though the Champa temples in Vietnam.
Speaker B:I mean, there's just really incredible history, incredible places, incredible artifacts that people just don't know about or just aren't as well known.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Aren't as talked about or at least not part of sort of Western popular culture.
Speaker B:And I think there, I think, as you said, there's a real opportunity there, you know, so other.
Speaker B:It's a challenge to other adventure authors, you know, set some more books in Southeast Asia.
Speaker B:There's a lot.
Speaker B:There's a lot there for you.
Speaker A:Yes, there really is.
Speaker A:I almost had to be very selective.
Speaker A:You know, this is what it was about.
Speaker A:It's about this one, this one relic, not all of the others that could have, that it could have been, you know, so, so yeah.
Speaker A:The one thing about Cambodia, though is it has, it's.
Speaker A:It feels to me, even going there only once to be a country in sort of massive shift, massive flux, investment, roads, railways.
Speaker A:You know, people when we were there were very excited that they just opened the, the country's first railway from Sunukeville to Campot down along the coast there.
Speaker A:Unfortunately, we didn't get to go on this, go on this trip, but we will, we will next time.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A: now, what it was in the early: Speaker A:And which Cambodia do you feel is the one in the book?
Speaker A:Do you feel it's the Cambodia that I would go and see today?
Speaker A:Or do you feel really, I mean, normal readers won't notice this, but you would.
Speaker A:And I might have been there.
Speaker A: ck in, you know, in the early: Speaker B:Yeah, that's such A good question.
Speaker B:It's sort of a mix.
Speaker B:I think there's always a part of me that says, well, okay, well, I wrote about the Cambodia that I knew, right?
Speaker B: as that Cambodia in the early: Speaker B:And that's when my language was the best and I had friends and I went to different parts of the country, right?
Speaker B:And when I saw a lot of these places, I'm actually writing about.
Speaker B:With that being said, I think there are some small updates I did for story reasons, or I also.
Speaker B:I didn't want to, because you're right, it has changed an incredible amount.
Speaker B: that went there in the early: Speaker B: When I first moved there in: Speaker B:So, I mean, that's.
Speaker B:Everyone drove, you know, dirt bikes or mopeds.
Speaker B:Cars were more rare.
Speaker B:If you had a car, it was like it had to be an suv.
Speaker B:Although there were always these, like, ubiquitous sort of like white Toyota Corollas everywhere as well.
Speaker B:But I mean, it was just sort of like everywhere was dirt roads, everywhere flooded.
Speaker B:The infrastructure was.
Speaker B:Was poor.
Speaker B:There was one building in the city over nine stories that was nine stories with Intercontinental Hotel.
Speaker B:It was the highest building in the city.
Speaker B:And then you compare that to now, right, which you saw just recently, and you fly into Phnom Penh and from the air you're like, oh, my gosh, is this Bangkok?
Speaker B:You know, like, it's got, you know, 20 or 30 skyscrapers.
Speaker B:The urban sprawl is just huge.
Speaker B:It's tripled in size, and every road is paved.
Speaker B:You know, you have this really pretty incredible infrastructure projects and so on.
Speaker B:So I didn't.
Speaker B:I wanted to reflect that a little bit as well, because when I was there, you know, and for example, when I was thinking about this question, I was thinking about the police, right?
Speaker B: wrote it, I wrote it in like: Speaker B:And back then it was the, you know, the police were not very trustworthy.
Speaker B:You rarely went to the police, local people rarely went to the police, so on, so on.
Speaker B:That's changed quite a bit, actually.
Speaker B:The police are much more reliable now.
Speaker B:They're paid better, they have better resources, and so on and so on.
Speaker B:And so the first draft I wrote it, I think, like.
Speaker B: he sort of judicial system of: Speaker B:And then that's when I sort of came up with the idea of adding a character who was a policeman, Cambodian policeman, because that helped me to say, okay, no, the police do act.
Speaker B:And they, you know, they do.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker B:You know, and I don't want to be disrespectful.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Of the ways in which they've changed, changed and developed since I lived there.
Speaker B:So that's.
Speaker B:So I think that's one of those things where it's a mixture.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And if I had to place it somewhere, like, I think I.
Speaker B: ok, I put it somewhere around: Speaker B:There are some new sort of things I didn't want to.
Speaker B:I don't think readers really know or care.
Speaker B: e not really thinking is this: Speaker B:But at the same time, like, I think for my own benefit, that's where I sort of put it, because I still felt like I knew the country quite well around that.
Speaker B:That area of time.
Speaker B:And I also.
Speaker B:The changes weren't so drastic that I didn't have to, you know, that I didn't have to.
Speaker B:That I could.
Speaker B:That I could still take them into account.
Speaker B:But, you know, But I mean, it's a city that's changed a lot.
Speaker B: when I was there in the early: Speaker B:It was kind of where all the backpackers went.
Speaker B:It was really a fun area that's gone.
Speaker B: ce they filled in the lake in: Speaker B:Does that matter?
Speaker B:No, not really.
Speaker B:You know, I could very easily talk about either one, but, you know, it does.
Speaker B:It does.
Speaker B:As a.
Speaker B:As a writer, you feel like I know one and I don't know the other.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So it's really.
Speaker B:Sorry.
Speaker B:I feel like I went all over the place with this question, but it's a difficult question to answer.
Speaker A:It is.
Speaker B:So just to say that I think it's been really cool to see where Cambodia's gone.
Speaker B:There's a real burgeoning middle class.
Speaker B:It's really developed from where it was.
Speaker B:There's still a lot of work to be done.
Speaker B:There's still a lot of poverty in the country, especially in the provinces.
Speaker B:But it's been really cool to see that happening.
Speaker B:And I wanted to make sure That I tried to reflect that in the book, both in the way I wrote about it, but also in sort of the hope for the future that the characters express about Cambodia and the hope for the direction of the country, which I hope readers would see that as a sort of respectful reflection of.
Speaker B:Okay, things have really been changing the country for a positive.
Speaker B:You know, in a positive way.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think that.
Speaker A:And it's interesting when, as a writer, because you sort of do have to take a snapshot in time, don't you?
Speaker A:You have to.
Speaker A:You have to think, this is the place now.
Speaker A:It won't always be like this.
Speaker A:It hasn't always been like this, but I have to.
Speaker A:I have to hit the shutter button and save.
Speaker A:Because otherwise the story will never be finished.
Speaker A:To leave those details out.
Speaker A:It makes it a poorer book.
Speaker A:You want those details?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I wrote.
Speaker A: athmandu, and I went there in: Speaker A:Didn't spend very long there, four or five days, something like this.
Speaker A:But I now feel like I'd like to go back to see, because it's been almost 10 years since I was there, and I feel like I'll have a similar experience.
Speaker A:You know, it must have.
Speaker A:I imagine there are parts that are the same, but I imagine there are also things that are very, very different that have changed a lot in those 10 years.
Speaker A:But it will still be a great story, and I want it to be.
Speaker A:To be how it was when I first wrote it.
Speaker A:So Cambodia aside, then we'll move on and move on from Cambodia for a moment.
Speaker A:Are there any mysteries and places that you would love to write a novel about, an adventure novel about in the future?
Speaker A:Like, not.
Speaker A:Not in the future.
Speaker A:I mean, a book set in the future.
Speaker A:I mean, in your future as a writer.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:That's a great.
Speaker B:That's a great question.
Speaker B:So I'm working on the sequel right now to.
Speaker B:To the Coquette Conspiracy, and that one's going to be set across Southeast Asia, but at least partially in Burma, in Myanmar, and concern.
Speaker B:And the sort of.
Speaker B:The.
Speaker B:The artifact that's going to be the hook is.
Speaker B:Is the Great Bell of Damazetti, which I think is a really fascinating, cool story of this.
Speaker B: In the: Speaker B:And against the advice of, like, a local astrologer who told him it was a bad time of year to do it, he did it anyway.
Speaker B:The largest bell ever built, supposedly the Legend has it covered in writing that, that no one could read, right.
Speaker B:Including the people who made the bell.
Speaker B:And when it was built, it had a horrible tone, like no one wanted to strike it because it just sounded awful.
Speaker B:But then it hung in sort of the Shreddedon Pagoda in Myanmar, the most famous pagoda in Myanmar for.
Speaker B:For 100 years, until a Portuguese adventurer tried to take it down and cast it into cannonballs.
Speaker B:And so he rolled it down the hill to the river, put on a raft, and it promptly sank because the bell was supposedly something like 290 tons.
Speaker B:So you can imagine, what raft can you build that can support a 290 ton bell?
Speaker B:So anyway, it sank to the bottom of the river.
Speaker B:It's been there ever since.
Speaker B:That's how the legend goes.
Speaker B:People have, you know, tried to find it for years.
Speaker B:There have been professional divers, there have been the government sort of sponsored people, there have been amateur divers, there's like a National Geographic diver who went down.
Speaker B:I mean, all sorts of people who have gone to look for this bell.
Speaker B:But there's all these questions there also, like, where is the bell?
Speaker B:Is the bell underneath the river?
Speaker B:Has the river moved?
Speaker B:Is it.
Speaker B:Is it like way down in the dirt and the muck?
Speaker B:Is it 40, you know, is it like a couple kilometers to the east when maybe the river sort of changed course a little bit?
Speaker B:Like, where is it exactly?
Speaker B:It's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Speaker B:So that's sort of the hook for me right now, which will then develop into also a broader story which will involve another artifact, but I'll keep that one secret.
Speaker B:And, and then the other one, actually, the other story that I've always wanted to write, which I haven't gotten to yet.
Speaker B:And it'll be maybe outside of this series because it's not Southeast Asia, but it's such an interesting story.
Speaker B:Have you ever heard of the disaster at Kurna?
Speaker B:I might have told you about this last time we spoke.
Speaker B:The disaster at Kurna, does that sound familiar?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:Remind me.
Speaker B:So in the 18.
Speaker B: I think it was the: Speaker B:1850s, there were like a bunch of German and British and continental sort of archaeologists doing work in Iraq and Syria and in Iraq with like the Hittite and the Syrian civilizations.
Speaker B:So there was.
Speaker B:There was.
Speaker B:I think it was Assyrian.
Speaker B:There was like a dig at a major Assyrian city run by this guy and I'm forgetting his name is escaping me right now, but I remember the guy who he entrusted the artifacts to.
Speaker B:So anyway, at some point they needed to leave the dig.
Speaker B:They Wanted to take the artifacts back to Europe.
Speaker B:And so he put this Swiss guy named, I think it was Alexander Clement, C L E I E M E N T in charge of taking these barges of antiquities up the river, up the Tigris river in Iraq, through Baghdad and then to the.
Speaker B:To, you know, and then eventually to Europe.
Speaker B:So it was like 50 miles outside of Baghdad.
Speaker B:They were ambushed and they had like 250 crates of antiquities, right?
Speaker B:Including these two massive bull statues which, like, guarded the gates, like, huge, like, you know, 15, 20ft tall that guarded the.
Speaker B:The gates of the city and that sort of thing.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:So 250 crates of antiquities, they're ambushed 50 miles outside of Baghdad and by, like a local tribe who then proceed to dump 150 of the crates into the river.
Speaker B:And I'm sorry, they dump the whole, like, all 250 crates into the river.
Speaker B:And then a couple years later, they're able to go back and look for the crates and they recover a hundred of them.
Speaker B:So there are 150 crates that are still to this day unaccounted for.
Speaker B:And there's all these questions of, like, why did.
Speaker B:Why did these people dump them in the river?
Speaker B:Like, you know, like, why did they just, you know, and so the sort of.
Speaker B:The typical explanation is they were looking for gold.
Speaker B:You're like, well, I don't know.
Speaker B:That's just not super satisfactory.
Speaker B:So you can already see how there's like, was there some, like, you know, artifact that could never be found, you know, hidden among the.
Speaker B:In the crates, you know, and now it's.
Speaker B:Now it's sunk at the bottom of the river.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And so it's sort of actually, in some ways of oddly similar story to the Damazetti Bell, but.
Speaker B:But something that I think is just kind of cool, you know, to think about.
Speaker B:And even is there as, like.
Speaker B: As, like recent as the: Speaker B:The Japanese did like, like a Japanese funded, like a dive, basically, to try and find the artifacts from the disaster at Kurna.
Speaker B:It's a famous archaeological disaster, and they found nothing.
Speaker B:So it's sort of.
Speaker B:I don't know, it's.
Speaker B:There's definitely something there, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I have yet to sort of put it into a story structure and figure out what I want to write about it.
Speaker B:But it's been in the back of my mind ever since I read it.
Speaker B:Like, it was like two sentences and some, like, book I was reading, and I was like, that was so cool.
Speaker B:And then I went and, like, did some research about it and was Like, I need to write about this someday.
Speaker B:That's cool.
Speaker A:Love that, love that.
Speaker A:And I can see I do the same.
Speaker A:You read something and all of a sudden those cogs start to whir in your mind and the story begins and then you have to go, not yet, because I've got all these other things I've got to finish first.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:Put that on heist, write it down.
Speaker A:But no, that's a fantastic story.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:That was absolutely great.
Speaker A:Where can people find you and your books?
Speaker A:Online?
Speaker B:Yeah, thanks.
Speaker B:So my books, currently my book the Cookie Conspiracy is available on Amazon.
Speaker B:If you decide that you want to go to Cambodia because you're inspired or you read my book and you want to go, you can also find it actually in paperback copy in the English language bookstores in Phnom Penh, which I'm really happy about.
Speaker B:And it's a more recent development.
Speaker B:But yeah, on Amazon in Europe, on Amazon in the uk, Amazon, anywhere that there's an Amazon or anywhere that Amazon ships to.
Speaker B:I currently am exclusive with Amazon, so you'll find it only there.
Speaker B:My second book I'm working on publishing, which is the Sci Fi book and then the third book, which is the sequel to this, this next book I'm writing right now.
Speaker B:So go look on Amazon.
Speaker B:I do have a website as well.
Speaker B:You can find that on, on my Amazon author page, which I think is probably the easiest way.
Speaker B:And I will post updates there.
Speaker B:But it's not necessarily something I'm really trying to leverage.
Speaker B:But yeah, but definitely if you haven't read the book, if you're interested to learn more about Cambodia, then please do go check it out.
Speaker B:Thanks.
Speaker A:That's fantastic.
Speaker A:And just to confirm, Koke is K O H K E R.
Speaker A:Conspiracy.
Speaker B:Yes, exactly.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's just the way that it was translated into.
Speaker B:Into English because that's the name in Cambodian.
Speaker A:Fantastic.
Speaker A:Caleb, that was wonderful.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to speaking to you again for sure.
Speaker A:This is the Adventure Story podcast.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for hanging out with me today.
Speaker A:It's been great to spend some time with you.
Speaker A:If you've enjoyed the show, please subscribe.
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Speaker A:It takes just seconds, but really helps me spread the word about this show.
Speaker A:And if you have a story you'd like me to explore, let me know via email is the best way.
Speaker A:Hellokerichardsonauthor.com although you can find me on socials as well at lukerichardson Author.
Speaker A:Now, just to get serious for a second at the end of this podcast because it's relevant to where we were talking about in this podcast in Cambodia.
Speaker A:While we were in Cambodia, Mrs.
Speaker A:Richardson and I visited an exhibition on how the country continues to be plagued by landmines that were laid there in the conflicts in the 90s and the 80s and the 70s.
Speaker A: andmine Relief fund this year: Speaker A:Although there are several charities who do great work in this area, this is the one who runs the museum we visited, so we made a connection with them.
Speaker A:Then, in addition to removing mines, they work with an organization that has built nearly 50 schools on and around the old minefields after they've given that land back to the to the people who live there.
Speaker A:As an ex teacher, education is very important to me.
Speaker A:I understand the transformational nature of education, so that made me think it was a really good cause to support as well.
Speaker A:This means that a small percentage of the money paid for my books, my audiobooks, my subscriptions, anything like that goes towards this fund.
Speaker A:So by having a great story, by enjoying one of my books, you are helping the people who helped inspire the story too, because the story was inspired by our visit to Cambodia and the regions that are affected by this.
Speaker A:Should you be interested, you can see the work that the Landmine Relief Fund do on their website, which islandmine relief fund.com in fact, if you just googled Landmine Relief Fund Cambodia, I expect you'd find it there.
Speaker A:So if you need more adventure in your life, and let's be honest, who doesn't, you might want to join the Adventure Society.
Speaker A:This weekly newsletter is your ticket to travel with me to share my real world adventures and find out when a new story or season of this podcast drops.
Speaker A:Lukerichardsonauthor.com Adventuresociety is where you need to go.
Speaker A:A special thanks to my patrons who make creating in different ways like this possible.
Speaker A:All my books and all my podcasts are dedicated to you.
Speaker A:You keep me motivated when times get tough and focused when something else threatens to steal my attention.
Speaker A:As you know, it does quite frequently, like setting up another podcast or going on another adventure to see something or another research trip.
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Speaker A:Lukerichardsonauthor.com Patreon P A T R E O N is where you need to go.
Speaker A:And if you're a fan of adventure stories like the one I've told Today today, check out my books@lukerichardsonauthor.com Bon voyage.
Speaker A:Thank you so much.
Speaker A:Enjoy the adventure and I'll see you next time.
