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Wat’s next? W Cambodia has more to offer beyond Angkor Wat, finds Nick Redmayne


DESTINATIONS CAMBODIA | ASIA


t


he days when crowds would gather to watch the sunrise at Angkor Wat, searching for a moment of spiritual stillness in spite of the swarm of camera-clicking tourists around them,


feel like a very distant memory. Until last year, Cambodia’s biggest temple complex was


drawing ever-increasing hordes of tourists keen to follow in Angelina Jolie’s Tomb Raider footsteps. Yet visitors rarely ventured any farther, often flying in and out of Siem Reap as an adjunct to tours of Thailand or Vietnam. Now, despite talk about travel restarting more sustainably and avoiding the perils of overtourism, it remains to be seen whether visitors really can be persuaded to go beyond the most popular tourist sites. Those who do take the time to explore in more depth, however, will find Cambodia is a country reborn.


PHNOM PENH


At the meeting of the Mekong, Bassac and Tonle Sap rivers, 19th-century French planners created a city populated by art deco and art nouveau architecture. Phnom Penh survived the Khmer Rouge, its soul outliving that of several southeast Asian capitals. Steel and glass development still threatens to obscure its heritage but hasn’t yet succeeded. About town, Tuol Tompoung or Russian Market, named after canny Soviet shoppers of the 1980s, provides a maze of narrow alleyways and stalls selling everything from T-shirts to tiger prawns. For first-time visitors, a contemplative hour spent at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum provides a necessary context. Considering the manifest depths of Khmer Rouge inhumanity, the almost universal hospitality of Cambodians is all the more remarkable. Elsewhere, an evening stroll along Riverside, following the


Tonle Sap from downtown, is a Phnom Penh ritual and a prelude to dinner. The city’s innovative restaurant scene, led by young Cambodian chefs, serves up world-class Khmer, French, Thai


² travelweekly.co.uk 11 FEBRUARY 2021 25


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