Qualla: Cambodian Landmine Museum

Cambodian Landmine Museum: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodney Evans/AusAID, CC BY 2.0. He was roughly five years old when the Khmer Rouge put him to work laying landmines. His parents had already been killed. The boy who would become known as Aki Ra did not choose this life, but decades later he chose what to do with it. Since 1992, working first with a stick, a knife, and a hoe, he has personally defused an estimated 50,000 landmines and pieces of unexploded ordnance across Cambodia. The museum he built to display those defused weapons sits 25 kilometers north of Siem Reap, inside the Angkor National Park near the Banteay Srey temple complex, and it exists for a reason that is simple and devastating: the war ended, but the mines did not.

Image: Rodney Evans/AusAID | CC BY 2.0

Cambodian Landmine Museum: A Child Soldier's Reckoning

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cannibal_clown (talk) (Uploads), CC BY-SA 3.0. Aki Ra believes he was born around 1970 or 1973; he is not certain. Orphaned in a Khmer Rouge camp, he was raised by a woman named Yourn alongside other parentless children. As soon as he was strong enough to be useful, local commanders pressed him into service. He laid mines, co...

Image: Cannibal_clown (talk) (Uploads) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cambodian Landmine Museum: A Dollar to See the Collection

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jwslubbock, CC BY-SA 4.0. Word spread among travelers in the late 1990s: a young Khmer man near Siem Reap was clearing landmines with hand tools and storing the defused ordnance in his house. Tourists began showing up to see the collection. In 1999, Aki Ra started charging one dollar for admission, funnel...

Image: Jwslubbock | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cambodian Landmine Museum: The Mines That Remain

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dnrallis, CC BY-SA 4.0. The scale of Cambodia's contamination defies easy comprehension. Estimates suggest four to six million landmines and pieces of unexploded ordnance remain buried across the country, with some calculations reaching as high as ten million. Since 1979, mines and explosive remnants of...

Image: Dnrallis | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cambodian Landmine Museum: The Children of the Museum

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dnrallis, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the villages where Aki Ra cleared mines, he kept finding children. Some had been wounded by the same ordnance he was removing. Others had been orphaned or abandoned by families too poor or too broken to care for them. He brought them home. The museum is not only a museum; it i...

Image: Dnrallis | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cambodian Landmine Museum: Among the Temples

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Jpatokal at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. The museum's location within the Angkor National Park places it in a landscape where ancient grandeur and modern trauma coexist. The Banteay Srey temple, a 10th-century jewel of pink sandstone carved with extraordinary delicacy, lies just to the north. The great temples of Angkor...

Image: User: (WT-shared) Jpatokal at wts wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 4.0