Cambodia is a country in southeast Asia. It sits between Thailand and Vietnam, with Laos to the north. The capital is Phnom Penh. Many people there are Khmer, and Khmer is also the main language. English borrowed the country name from French Cambodge and Portuguese Camboja. For a time the country was officially called Kampuchea; that is not a different place, only another form of the same name, and you will still meet it in older books. In the 1970s, under Pol Pot, Cambodia went through terrible years, and a civil war followed in the 1980s. There were free elections in 1993, and people began to rebuild after a long war. Older English writing can sound very dark because of that history; the country is also temples, farming, the Mekong, and ordinary life. A 2014 figure put the population a little over 15 million; that number is dated, but it tells you the scale. We say Cambodia for the country now.