I've been documenting my travels on "polarsteps.com/planetblogger", and Cambodia turned out to be one of those places **where you can't separate the landscape from its myths.** The Naga — the many-headed serpent — isn't a background detail here; it's carved into temple balustrades, coiled along staircases, and built into how people talk about where they come from.

The version I kept hearing goes roughly like this: a foreign prince, Preah Thong, arrived by sea and fell in love with Soma, the daughter of the Naga king who ruled the waters. To give the couple a kingdom, the Naga king drank up the water that covered the land, revealing the earth beneath — and that dry land became Cambodia. **To this day many Khmer describe themselves as "children of the Naga."** It reframes the serpent completely: not a monster to be slain, but an ancestor and a giver of land.

My latest journal follows a route through Cambodia with that story in mind. Each stop pairs photos with a bit of context — where the Naga shows up, how it's remembered locally, and how the myth still shapes the places you walk through. **It's part travel route, part attempt to follow the legend back to the water it came from.**

If you're into the ground that myths grow out of, **this might be worth a look.** I'd also love to hear other tellings of the Naga — the Khmer version differs from the ones you find across the wider region, and I'm sure people here know variants I didn't come across.

Cambodia's founding myth is a snake, and it's everywhere you look!