In the hush of early light at Preah Khan, when the vines still drip with dew and the stone lions seem half-asleep, a little girl pedals through the temple ruins on a squeaky pink bicycle. She is no older than seven. Barefoot. Brown legs dusty. Her shirt bears faded cartoon rabbits, and her hair is tied with mismatched elastics, one yellow, one red. Her name is Srey Leak—a name the breeze carries lightly between the crumbling gates.
She is not a tourist. Not a guide’s daughter. Not part of a tour. She is simply there—gliding between toppled pillars and headless apsaras as though this ancient Khmer temple were her own playground.
The bicycle wobbles slightly as it hits uneven stones, but she steadies it with a practiced shake. She rings her plastic bell once—ting!—and a monkey in the shade near the eastern gallery looks up, then goes back to sleep.
The foreigners begin to arrive, cameras clutched and footsteps too loud. They stop and stare. Some smile. Some whisper: “Is she supposed to be here?”
But Srey Leak doesn’t mind. She rides past them like a whisper. Like time itself.
She turns tight circles in the Hall of Dancers, humming a tune known only to her, the ruins echoing with small laughter that hasn’t lived here for centuries. Her mother sells cold coconuts outside the north gate, under a tree tangled with offerings. Her father was once a tuk-tuk driver, but now farms rice when the rains are good.
She has no phone. No shoes. No passport. But she knows these ruins by heart: where the steps are too steep, where the bats sleep, where the faces of old kings crumble gently in the moss. When she tires, she lays the bike gently down beside a collapsed stupa and sits on a stone carved with prayers in Sanskrit. She draws in the dirt with a stick—temples, rivers, a sun with too many rays. A dream world of her own.
By mid-morning, she is gone. The bike is gone. The tourists are left with their photos, wondering if they really saw her. But some swear they did. A little girl on a pink bicycle, riding through history like she belonged there all along.