Cambodge & Portrait — Akim Ly: “Our difference is the people”

Born within the walls of Angkor Wat, in the pagoda where her grandfather was Grand Abbot, Akim Ly grew up amid prayer, chores and resourcefulness. After thirteen years building businesses in Vietnam, she returned to Siem Reap to found Adventures Cambodia, a private tour company owned and run by women. A childhood at Angkor, a restaurant opened at sixteen, a commitment to preserving temples and supporting remote schools: a portrait of a woman for whom Cambodian hospitality isn't something you talk about, it's something you live.

Akim Ly, founder and director of Adventures Cambodia

Could you introduce yourself in a few words?

My name is Akim Ly. I am the founder and director of Adventures Cambodia, a private tour company based in Siem Reap. I was raised inside the walls of Angkor, in the pagoda where my grandfather was Grand Abbot. I founded the company in 2013, after thirteen years running businesses in Vietnam. It is women-owned and women-led, and every guide who works with us is Cambodian, from Siem Reap.

You grew up inside the Angkor Wat complex itself, in the Northern pagoda, alongside your grandfather, Grand Abbot of the site. What has stayed with you from that extraordinary childhood?

The pagoda is still standing. If you face Angkor Wat, it is on your left, behind the food vendors, and anyone can walk to it. Our houses are not. My mother built the first one out of bamboo, palm leaves and wood, on the land in front of the temple. None of the places we lived have survived. So Angkor has never been a monument I visit. It is the place I woke up in, swam in during the rainy season, and learned to read in. I lived the same days as everyone else there. We had chores. We cleaned, we cooked, we prayed, we read and we learned. Nothing was rushed, and each thing took the time it needed to take. That is what stayed with me most, a different sense of time. I still walk slowly. I still cook slowly, because cooking is patience. And success matters to me, but I have never measured it in money. If money comes, good. If it does not, I am fine, as long as I stay who I am.

As a young girl, you were reportedly dressed and presented as a boy so you could remain with the monks. How did you experience that period, and what did you take away from it?

It was a peaceful time inside a difficult period. I had a roof, some food, an education. I did not understand then how much that was. Day to day it was not easy, because they knew I was not really one of them. And I was already different in my character, the same as I am now. I wanted more. I wanted to be independent. Even then, something inside me was saying: this is not my path, I have to change it.

You learned to read pali on palm leaves under the monks' guidance. What place does that early education still hold in your relationship with Cambodia and with Angkor today?

My grandfather, Loung Sake, taught me to read pali on palm leaves inside the pagoda. That is where my education started. Angkor Wat is for me both a national pride and a memory that is very special. As a kid I often climbed the stairs to the top, but my way down was much faster: rolling. A child's skull is soft, so it was only a few bruises. The moat was our swimming pool, and today I can say that is probably why you can still find me in a pool, swimming front crawl like a boy.

Akim Ly, as a young woman, in front of the towers of Angkor Wat

At thirteen, you had to leave school to help support your family. How did you experience that break, and how do you look back on that shortened schooling today?

In fact, I left school a little earlier than that. I had to leave the pagoda and go back to live with my mother, and that is when I realised my time in the pagoda had not been so tough after all. At my mother's, food was not available every day.

School itself went well for me. I went through five grades in two years, and to reach secondary school in Siem Reap I was up at four in the morning and ran the seven kilometres barefoot, sometimes in clothes still wet from washing. But eating was the more urgent problem. That is why I chose to leave and find a job. At first, I couldn't find one, but the army accepted me, and after a year, I dropped it to find a real job as a cleaner in a restaurant, and then ended up running the business for the owner. I am not a person with regrets, but I would have loved to study to be a doctor or a teacher. Still, no regrets: doing what I did brought me to the life I have today.

At sixteen, you opened your first restaurant facing Angkor Wat. How did that early entrepreneurial drive come about?

Independence. I wanted to own my life, and to be responsible when I failed as much as when I succeeded.

But before any restaurant was mine, I had to find work. There were only a few restaurants in Siem Reap then, and none of them wanted me. Walking back, I saw a building going up, so I went in and asked. They looked at me and asked if I was a boy or a girl. I said, I don't know, what do you think? They laughed, and they let me stay. I helped build that restaurant, and they gave me food and a place to sleep. I washed dishes, then I cooked, then I served, then I was the cashier, and in the end, I was running it.

At sixteen I opened my own, near Angkor Wat, in an old French building. We called it Angkor Restaurant. When the UN soldiers arrived, business was very good. I bought land, I built a house for my mother, and later I ran the public toilets around the temples, because tourism was starting and somebody had to.

You then spent around thirteen years as a businesswoman in Vietnam. What does that period mean in your journey, a chapter that's often told less than your childhood at Angkor?

As much as I loved that period, it also gave me my two children. Vietnam was the best way for me to expand my knowledge and to see people do things differently. You have to imagine that when I left Siem Reap, it was a town still in reconstruction, nothing like the beautiful city we have today. When you live in a country that is not yours, you need strong energy to make it. Learning Vietnamese, starting other businesses, trying and failing. That is where I learned to run a business properly, and to see hospitality as a profession rather than something you pick up along the way.

You speak Khmer, English and Vietnamese, and you're currently working on your French. How has this journey across languages and countries shaped the way you work?

Languages come naturally to me, but only when I live them day to day, because I love to talk, to joke and to make friends. That is why my French is not going as fast as I would like. I should take more holidays in France.

French is not a random choice for me, though. My first restaurant was in an old French colonial building, and French-speaking travellers have been good to us since. Guide du Routard and Elle Québec have both written about our tours.

How did you come to found Adventures Cambodia when you returned to Siem Reap in 2013?

I was missing my family so much. And I am sure you understand, but usually we Khmer do not travel that well overseas. We need our prahok, our amok, our own vegetables. My parents were not getting younger. And I really wanted my children to grow up in Cambodia, to fully understand the beauty of our country. We began with Vespa tours, and over the years we added vintage Jeeps, pedal-assist electric bikes, food tours and countryside tours.

Akim Ly ahead of a vintage Vespa tour through the Angkor temples

Tell us about your professional activities running Adventures Cambodia today.

Adventures Cambodia runs private tours only. One party at a time, no shared buses, no fixed script. We work across the Angkor temples, the Siem Reap countryside, and the city in the evening for our food tours, by Vespa, by vintage Jeep or by pedal-assist electric bike. All our guides are Cambodian, from Siem Reap, and licensed Grade A, and several have been with us for more than ten years. My own job is running the company. The temples belong to our licensed guides, that is their profession and not mine. But from time to time I still take a countryside tour or a food tour myself, because I love showing people something other than the temples. There is so much to do around here.

An Adventures Cambodia vintage Jeep in front of the Victory Gate, Angkor Thom

Adventures Cambodia is a women-owned and women-led company. What difference does that make, in your view, in how you run the company and work with your teams?

We are women-owned and women-led, which is still not usual in Cambodian tourism.

What a woman brings, I think, is that she is also a mother. You look after your people. You teach them, and then you let them go when they are ready. Many of the people who worked with us now run their own business. That is the part I am most proud of, more than the tours.

Tell us about one of your projects or tours that means the most to you

Recently we launched the electric bike tours. It was a long-time dream, but it took me a while to find the right bike, with the quality I wanted. It is probably one of the best things to do if you have already seen the temples many times and want a different experience, or even on a first visit, if you want to escape the everyday route.

A group on an electric bike tour in front of a Bayon face tower

You offer visitors a reading of Angkor and Cambodia “as you know it,” rather than the usual tourist circuit. What does that mean in practice on your tours?

It means the tour is private, so it can change. If you want to stay an extra hour at one temple, you stay. Our guides grew up here, so they are showing you the place they know rather than reciting a script. Practically, we drop you at one entrance and collect you at another, so you walk through a site once instead of doubling back to a car park. And we build the route to keep you away from the busiest hours where we can.

Adventures Cambodia also supports local initiatives, including school programmes. Can you tell us more about that commitment?

We do not have one big programme. We help project by project, where we can see what happens to the money.

There is a small museum I came across, and the man who runs it moved me so much that we decided to help properly. Every month we send money to Preah Khan of Kompong Svay, in Preah Vihear. It is an enormous temple, very far from anywhere, and the forest takes it back if nobody stops it. The money is for cutting the roots, the trees, the vegetation. Not glamorous work, but somebody has to do it.

On the lake we work with the Bamboo Shoot Foundation on the plastic in Tonlé Sap. We plant trees with a few associations. And with the schools, we put our guests directly in touch with remote schools where we know the money is needed and we know where it goes.

What do you do outside of work?

I am involved in the Cambodia Tourism Association, and this year I was elected Vice President for the Siem Reap chapter, but that is still tourism. Outside of that, I try to take my time and go to our land in Srae Ambel, down in Koh Kong. That is where I can see all the beauty Cambodia has to show. Or you can meet me on a bicycle inside the forest.

What do you love most about Cambodia, and what do you love least?

We are resilient. With all the crises of today we still smile, we still enjoy our day, and if you go into the countryside, people who have almost nothing will welcome you into their home and share their meal. What I am not so keen on is the plastic pollution you see when you travel around Cambodia. Even sometimes in the quieter parts of the Angkor complex. We are so proud of our temples, and I do not understand how we cannot pick up our own rubbish after a good picnic. That is also why we work on the plastic in Tonlé Sap rather than only complaining about it. I miss the time when there was no plastic and we carried everything in banana leaves. But that is utopia now.

After a childhood at Angkor, years in Vietnam, and a return to Siem Reap, what lesson do you draw from your experience?

Our difference is not the temples. It is not the beaches or the cities either. Every country has something to look at.

Our difference is the people. The way we take in a stranger and make them comfortable, even when we have almost nothing to give. That is what I would want someone to remember, not the photographs.