One of the most mythic and potent journeys of our time, up the Mekong River through the exquisite, complicated, surprising terrain of Vietnam and Cambodia to the great ruins at Angkor - the magnificent Khmer temples built from the 9th-13th centuries AD that are being painstakingly restored deep in the Cambodian jungle. Director Les Guthman travels by boat up a river whose raw beauty and power were celebrated by Marguerite Duras in the 1920s. But in our time it became known as "the river of evil memory" as it coursed through Southeast Asia in the second half of the 20th Century. Today, the river in Vietnam is filled with the vibrant life of a young nation free of a century of war. In Cambodia the past weighs far heavier. We travel up the Mekong passed Phnom Penh, once called "the beguiling beauty of SE Asia," toward the Laotian border, then return back to the capital and head northwest up one of the world's great natural wonders, the Tonle Sap River, and across the great Tonle Sap Lake, one of the planet's most abundant fisheries. In Angkor, the World Monuments Fund's John Stubbs and John Sanday describe their 15-year restoration of one of the jewels of a city called "the eighth wonder of the world," the 12th Century temple complex of Preah Khan. And as they take us on an insider's tour of Preah Khan, along with the other major sites of Angkor Wat, Bayon and Banteay Srei, we learn that the story of Stubbs and Sanday's work in Angkor is not only a story of the rebirth of Angkor...
