Sitting comfortably in a wicker chair on the patio of the famous Red Piano Bar in the centre of the dusty town of Siem Reap, northern Cambodia, I contemplate my next visit to Angkor Wat with a sense of satisfaction and wonder.

For more than a decade I have been fortunate enough to have travelled each year, and often several times a year, to the famous jungle temples of Angkor, bringing with me scores of excited Canadian travellers who came to absorb the history, the culture and the monumental enormity of this Southeast Asian treasure.

Back in the mid-1980's, I can recall gazing longingly at the impressive model of Angkor Wat in the Grand Palace in central Bangkok and wondering what it would be like to visit Angkor in person. At that time, travel to Cambodia was impossible, the Vietnamese occupation was still underway and the country had been closed since long before the civil war started in the early 1970's.

So I stood in line and waited.

And sure enough, after three years, eight months and twenty days of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, after more than ten years of Vietnamese "liberation", after countless skirmishes within Phnom Penh itself, after years of looting of antiquities from the temples and after more than two million Cambodian citizens simply disappeared, the survivors leapt out of the ashes and welcomed the world in.

I was first in line.

On my first visit Phnom Penh was in shambles. Most store fronts were vacant. Electric power was intermittent. There were no street lights and no one out after dark. There was no education system, no monetary system and only rudimentary security. Accommodation was basic at best. And, if the mosquitoes didn't carry you away they would simply leave you to the thousands of lizards and beetles covering every square inch of the world around you.

The town of Siem Reap near Angkor in the north of the country was even worse. An intrepid friend and I walked miles one night in stifling heat and humidity, down dark streets, trying to find a telephone that worked. Finally giving up, we returned to the hotel where my friend spent a good hour stuffing tissues into the cracks in the outside walls of our room in a fruitless attempt to keep out the mosquitoes. In the middle of the night I heard him putting the wastebasket upside down over a family of cockroaches.

When we visited the Angkor temples we went with armed soldiers to discourage bandits.

And now, just over ten years later, how things have changed!

Phnom Penh is now one of our very favourite cities, full of outdoor cafes, wonderful restaurants, excellent shopping, a superb National Museum and interesting historical sites. Even the dusty northern town of Siem Reap is blossoming into a more modern and energetic town with scores of new trendy hotels, great restaurants, feel-good bars, an atmospheric central market and vibrant cultural theatres presenting traditional Khmer song and dance.

But, except for some structural enhancements, the great stone temples of Angkor are as they were in the 11th century. Magnificent monuments erected by their Hindu and Buddhist kings complete with bas-reliefs of famous battles and scenes of daily life. Along with Angkor Wat, the complex contains what was the largest city on earth at the time, the magnificent Angkor Thom with its Bayon and Baphuon temples, its terraces of the Elephants and the Leper King and its enormous stone gates at the cardinal points, each topped with beautiful stone heads of the Boddhisatva. If this isn't enough, you can visit the amazing pink and green Citadel of the Women, the famous jungle temples of Ta Phrom and Preah Khan and you'll still have several hundred other places to visit as well if you wish.

In the past ten years the number of visitors has increased dramatically and it's only a matter of time until the character of this spectacular site changes forever.

The time to see it is now!

Call us and we'll help get you started.