The Road to Battambang

Mme Rancourt is Cambodian but she has lived most of her life in France, where she moved in 1980, about a year after Vietnamese troops chased the remnants of the black-shirted Khmer Rouge army out of Phnom Penh. She is Cambodian but she is mostly French, and she is French in a peculiarly French way—in a light, understated, occasionally brooding, but inevitably elegant way. Her weightless tailored linen pantsuits are testimony to her style and easy understanding of the demands of a tropical climate. She looks fit and much younger than her fifty-seven years. When in Battambang she always stays at Le Pavillon, an old colonial hotel run by a French management company. There is a timeless feel about the hotel's interior, or rather it feels like it's always 1934—the coolness of the checkered black-and-white floor tiles, the whirring of phlegmatic ceiling fans, the friendly hotel dog resting by the mahogany reception desk, the clunky black rotary telephone. The doors to the rooms, solid wood and curved at the top like ovals, are painted white. Mme Rancourt's room is on the second floor, facing the pool where a couple of elderly guests (French? Scandinavian?) are lounging in the shadow of an old mango tree. It's always the same room, reserved months in advance. Olivia, the hotel manager, originally from Marseilles, will make sure that the room is available to her friend—they have known each other for years and once even vacationed together in Portugal. These days Olivia doesn't have much time for travel. Le Pavillon has been featured in several guide books, and Anthony Bourdain once stayed here during one of his whirlwind tours of Southeast Asia. TripAdvisor ranks it as the #1 hotel in Battambang. More work (which Olivia performs cheerfully and without a complaint) is the price of success.

Mme Rancourt lives in Vertou, a fashionable suburb of Nantes, a lovely city in Brittany that Time magazine recently determined to be "the most livable in Europe." A reasonably successful real estate attorney, she runs her own agency, which is really just a two-person operation, consisting of Mme Rancourt herself and her scatterbrained but loyal assistant of many years, Mme Guillon. Mme Rancourt is married to Pierre Rancourt, an architect, and theirs has been a happy marriage, a marriage of equals, a marriage of mutual respect, of tenderness and understanding, and love of jazz and Italian vacations. They have two grown-up children: Dominique, who is expecting, has recently moved to London with her Swiss-born husband Daniel, a financial analyst whose joviality and easy laughter defy every common stereotype of a Swiss financier. Dominique is a serious and gentle soul, a foil to her outgoing husband. And then there is Bastien, Mme Rancourt's adored son and a kindred spirit, with whom she enjoys a raucous friendship that makes her feel younger than her age. Bastien studies computer science at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He is obsessed with artificial intelligence and Eastern European women; sometimes his mother wonders about the connection between these two preoccupations. And Pierre, her dear Pierre, it's been almost thirty years and not one regret, not a single disappointment. They were introduced at an office party back in 1988 and he immediately won her over with his easy charm and intelligence, his ability to be empathetic and accepting without indulging in liberal grandstanding. They slept together on their second date, which was not like her at all, but being with him, kissing his kind and open face, having him inside of her—passionate but keen on giving pleasure, not hurting—felt like the most natural thing in the world, like finally falling asleep in your own bed after a long absence from home. It was so easy to be with Pierre. It still is.

The Rancourts usually vacation in Umbria, where they own a modest three-room stone house in a sleepy lakeside village, some forty kilometers southwest of Perugia. They both harbor a strong preference for lakes and wooded retreats over crowded...