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You could be mistaken for thinking that this place could be heaven, except for the reality of course, of it being a third world country. Poverty stares you in the face regularly, but this doesn’t seem to stop the Cambodians from being the industrious people that they are. The magnificent handiwork produced here is evidence of their ingenuity and determination from a thousand years ago and beyond.

​The Khmer people are gentle and polite. The horror of their recent past hides from general view. They are ‘onwards and upwards’ with continuing their lives, now mostly (and hopefully) in peace and happiness, even amongst the continuing corruption.

​The children are full of vitality and are excited to make any contact with visitors. They run out to greet you in their villages, happy to become your latest photo opportunity. The older generations are generally reserved and quiet. Still, you might be lucky enough, as we were, to meet a local guide and to hear his account of what happened to his family during the years of the Khmer Rouge regime.

​You may even be so lucky as to stumble across an opportunity to teach English pronunciation at a local school. The school in which we had the privilege of teaching ran its evening power off a car battery. It did not possess a bookshelf with even a few books to help its students. It was, however, a five-minute walk to the most famous of locations, Angkor Wat temple. Cambodia is a country rich in contradictions.

​The food here is magnificent; the people that live here are superb; their landmarks are outstanding.

​Cambodia certainly is a place to fall in love with, and I have done so, wholeheartedly.