Holiday in Cambodia

It's an obvious title. But where once Dead Kennedys were probably correct, now they are very very wrong.

Oh Cambodia - for all who have not visited, you simply must come. It is a truly powerful and fascinating place.

We flew in yesterday from Bangkok (an uneventful 25 minute flight on an A319) and loved it from the moment we clapped eyes on its green rice pastures. Forgive me Thailand, but Cambodia is your more civilised, beautiful cousin.

Siem Reap is a really laid back town, with everything cultural and historical you could want at its doorstep. There are few foreigners here. The food is REALLY GOOD - it leaves Thai for dead. We are staying in Rosy Guesthouse which is $17US per night. Very clean, very homely. The town is full of French colonial architecture, which I understand is a far cry from the basic thatched hut guesthouses of yester-decade.

Yesterday we went to Angkor Wat, and I am afraid it leaves me a touch speechless. Lee - you were there with me at the Acropolis. Angkor is so, so much more. Like all temples of its period it is surrounded by a huge moat filled with lotus, which is what you drive along to reach its bridge. We arrived by moto (like a tuk-tuk) at about 5pm hoping to see a fabulous sunset. Alas no sun, but instead an impressive storm. Monks were chanting as it got dark and I just didn't really want to leave.

Angkor is chock-filled to the hilt with incredible carvings. You just don't get bored because even along the hundreds of metres of relief carved war scenes there are sweet little intermissions of deer, elephants, loving embraces, bowing trees and love hearts. I know it's a little un-PC, but I am very pleased that we came at a time that tourists can still enter Angkor. It needs a lot of restoration and I truly feel it needs to be periodically shut off from tourists (or at least tourism restricted) so that its incredible beauty can be preserved.

To bring us down from our hyberbolic euphoria we went to the aptly named "Pub Street" for dinner last night and had Indian food that rivals Maya Da Dhaba on Cleveland Street Sydney. We met up with a Cambodian man who works in one of the many orphanages and spent some talking about his story. He was a monk from 14 to 21, lost his parents to war when he was very young (like most young Cambodians) and had had a very nasty run-in with a land mine (also like most young Cambodians). He was the sweetest man, but eventually drinks dissolved our conversational skills and he left us with his contact details.

That would be about the time we met up with Lisa and Steve from Canberra who just didn't understand the meaning of moderation and really know what a sensible time to go home was. I don't remember much about last night but I know I had a really good time hugging and playing with the little orphans out in the street selling things for unscrupulous and perhaps morally corrupt adults.

The children are tragic. They're beautiful and very sweet orphans, and some of them are so very tiny. That is a tragedy in itself, to be so young and not have a childhood, but its the teenagers that really get you - this is a world of savvy street kids with perfect english who have far to much intelligence to be wasted scalping cheap postcards on the street. They are hustlers, all of them, but there's a part of you that's willing to be hustled just so you can offer them a meal.

I would really like to stay another day so we can spend a day at an orphanage, but our time to reach Vietnam draws near so we have to move on. We'll leave a sizable donation with Rosy Guesthouse who will ensure the money gets spent where its needed.

We went to the Land Mine Museum today. The trip out there was incredible - a full hour's journey into rural Cambodia, which was fantastic. The Land Mine Museum was very dark, as you'd expect. It made both of us angry, even angrier when we read which countries still manufacture land mines, which includes the US. When you see how land mines have affected the people here there is really no way you can condone or support their continued use. Indeed war, on a larger scale, is something that Cambodia still wears as a healing wound, and I hope that peace continues here because the people here really deserve a break - they're very community minded and loving - very different to their neighbours in Thailand.

We're off to Pnohm Phen tomorrow morning at the very civil time of 11am via a very civilised taxi ride for $50US. Consider Cambodia seriously as your next holiday destination - it is fun, beautiful and strikes to the very heart of humanity.