While hiding out from Vietnamese forces, Khmer Rouge soldiers used the extraordinary bas-reliefs at Angkor for target practice. The bullet holes are still visible, sitting alongside botched restoration jobs and headless statues of voluptuous Apsaras dancers, decapitated long ago for the illegal antique trade. Built between the ninth and 15th centuries, then reclaimed by the jungle for half a millennium, the temples of Angkor represent one of the most spectacular and important archaeological sites in Southeast Asia. Following the complex's 'rediscovery' in 1860 by Henri Mouhot, a French naturalist taking part in a Royal Geographical Society-sponsored expedition (the locals always knew it was there), French archaeologists began restoring the temples, clearing away the forest and meticulously rebuilding many of them stone block by stone block.
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