In March, 2003, she says, a half-metre-tall head of Vishnu was stolen from the stone banks of the Kbal Spean River. “Thieves just went in one night with a chainsaw and cut it out.” It’s now well protected “with armed guards,” she says, but when I take the three-kilometre hike along a steep trail through a chiarascuro forest of walnut and lichee trees to get to the main carvings along the river, I discover the entire stretch of the Kbal Spean from the its source above a waterfall to the plains below is guarded not by automatic-weapon-toting guards but by one unarmed kid in overalls and flip flops who says he’s twenty but looks fifteen.

Banteay Srey, thirty kilometres from Siem Reap, is a late-tenth-century Hindu temple built of pink sandstone. It is also the site of the most notorious South East Asia art theft, by André Malraux in 1923. Then minister of culture for France, later an author and resistance hero, Malraux used a chainsaw to get his treasure: two stones with bas-relief of dancing girls. Malraux was arrested at Phnom Penh for possessing stolen antiquities and given a suspended sentence. He returned to France but later returned to Indo-China to campaign against colonial exploitation.

Today, says Teneishvili, “the shipment of these big pieces out of the country can only be accomplished with the collusion of the military. The collectors claim they are helping to preserve Cambodia’s heritage.” It is believed that diplomats, who can use their immunity to facilitate art theft, are also involved.

But wealthy collectors who are seeking the grandest pieces aren’t the only problem. Smaller works command prices from $5,000 to $250,000 (U.S.), and require no contact with the military or diplomatic corps since they are much easier to spirit out of the country – either disguised as or hidden in a batch of similar-looking but legally purchased pieces. Most border guards are not art experts. One need only pay a visit to the workshops of Preah Ang Makhak Vann Street in Central Phnom Penh and purchase, for instance, five bas-reliefs of celestial dancing girls and place your stolen dancing girl among them. Moulds can be purchased in these workshops and the art work hidden inside. Or you can cover your stolen piece with a removable adhesive acrylic that holds paint, plaster, cement, or modelling paste, with which you can make your own carving of Vishnu or sacred elephant.

But the usual way is still to invade a site after it has been demined, and spirit your treasure over the border. When I was with Platoon 37, in the jungle, I asked if they ran into looters. Colonel Mean Sarun shook his head sadly. “Is the Army spread too thin?” I pressed. The unit’s medic, who was standing with the colonel, answered my questions this way, “I’ve been shooting at people since I was sixteen years old, during the Civil War. Many of the others here are older than me” – he gestured toward the colonel – “and have been shooting at people even longer. We’re tired of shooting at people.”