I love landing in Asia because the first thing that hits you as you exit the plane, even if you exit into an air-conditioned walkway, is the heat and humidity. It’s a completely different type of heat to the dry burning sun of Australia. It’s relentless and enveloping. If you’re not a fan it can be suffocating, but if you are its very pleasing – in a sweaty kind of way. There would be no smart suits worn in Cambodia.

There were about 60 of us in a hodge-podge of buyers, suppliers, partners and families. The five-star treatment started as soon as we landed in Siem Reap – escorted en masse through immigration and handed fresh-flower garlands we were herded onto air conditioned buses (ours was yellow), driven to our hotel, handed ice tea, walked through the grand entrance hall, relieved of our ice tea 68 seconds later and escorted to our rooms. We had a sneaky drink in the bar before a deep night’s sleep in a bed big enough for all seven dwarfs.

I woke up with the excitement one only really feels waking up in a new country for the first time. Aside from a vague knowledge that it was somewhere near Vietnam and terrorised by the Khmer Rouge, we didn’t know much about Cambodia before we found out we were going there. In order to inform ourselves, we immediately consulted the three pillars of the information age: Google Maps, Wikipedia and Rick Stein. The latter was the most appealing. Stein’s enthusiastic journey through the culinary diversity of the country left us salivating for more. I particularly wanted to try Amok, the apparently ubiquitous national dish of steam-cooked curried fish in banana leaves. Off we went with our meagre knowledge.

I don’t know if we were expecting a different type of trip exactly, but this Cambodian visit would be more tourist-bubble then tourist-trail. The first thing I was looking forward to when we woke up in the morning was the breakfast. Asian countries usually do a mean lunch and dinner, but totally fail at breakfast. What would Cambodia have to offer? We arrived at the dining room and were escorted by the waiter to the… western breakfast buffet. We had toast and bacon and coffee and chatted a bit. From there we all got back on the yellow bus and visited two temples, Angkor Tom and Ta Prohm. Both were ancient and impressive. The latter is known locally as Angelina Jolie Temple on account of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider being filmed there – and that is exactly what it was like. Or Indiana Jones or, in certain sections, Assassin’s Creed. I half expected to accidentally lean on the wrong block and have the ground open up and swallow us all. We went for an elephant ride (not air-conditioned). Back on the bus and back to the hotel for a fantastic meal of… western buffet lunch.

At this point we got talking to some other people around the lunch table. The subject of the Aussie nanny-state came up. I went off on one. “I know”, I said, “that there are three areas where people keep referring to the nanny state. There’s the pokies (slot machines), the carbon tax and… em…” The guy sitting to my right suddenly helps out – “Cigarettes.”
“Yeah – thanks – cigarettes. So there’s these three vices – or two vices rather – both bad, both destructive, both addictive. People suffer from gambling addiction. It destroys families. The government try to do something about it and all they get is criticism about restricting freedom and being ‘un-Australian’. And then there’s those nanny-state ads against plain cigarette packaging. They’re… I mean… well they’re evil. Ridiculous claims that plain packaging will actually make people smoke more. Do they think people are stupid? Trying to get people angry about their freedoms when in fact this is just a move to try to reduce death. I mean, seriously, who would anyone ever trust anything a tobacco company says? Why are these ads being taken seriously? It’s a disgrace!”
The guy to my right paused a moment and then said “Graham, you are aware, aren’t you, that all three of us work for Philip Morris?”

Back on the bus we got and after a few air-conditioned minutes we found ourselves at Angkor-Wat. This is the biggest and oldest of the 1,000 temples in Cambodia. During the Vietnam War the Khmer Rouge moved across the country – forcing everybody who wasn’t already a labourer out into the Killing Fields. They ransacked homes as they went, burning villages and destroying temples. When they got to Angkor-Wat, they stopped. In the documentary we watched before we came, Rick Stein asked one of the survivors of occupation why they didn’t destroy this temple too. “Well you see Angkor-Wat is too important. It’s part of our identity. No Angkor-Wat, no Cambodia.” It was exquisite. I’ll refrain from comparing it to any movies.

And after that we were yellow-bused back to the hotel again and then on to the town centre for dinner. Finally, I thought, Cambodian food! We arrived at a small fairly stylish restaurant which was completely booked out for our party. We sat down and unrolled the menu and it was… steak or seabass (western style).

I don’t want to sound like we’re complaining here. The whole thing was free, after all- we were lucky to be there and we knew it. It’s just that these bits are the more interesting bits to write about. We spilled out of the restaurant into the touristy night market and then the very touristy Pub Street. Myself and Marie were the last ones to stay out past midnight- sitting outside a bar at the deafening end of the street, watching the busy night stumble drunkenly past us.

I did get a bit of local culture the next day while Maire was off doing her business thing. A quick tuk-tuk ride into town and a couple of hours walking around lead to the local market. As opposed to the tourist tack and “iPoo” t-shirts in the night market, this was the place the locals went to buy and eat. The food hall was, depending on your outlook, a fascinating look into Cambodian dining or a health and safety nightmare. There were long tables with ladies sitting on them cutting the heads off eels, fish and crabs – fish guts and wrinkly toes mixing happily while steaming bowls of fish-head noodles were handed out and devoured by locals. Chicken pieces with feathers still on them sat in the 35 degree heat. Some of the chickens were still very much alive and kicking around the stalls. Beside this were the ground-stalls of mostly exotic vegetables. I have to say that, as much as I wanted to try the local food, I could not bring myself to order anything here. Everything was so tightly packed that I was brushing against the fish butchers as I walked around, so taking photographs would have just seemed rude.

The rest of the town centre in Siem Reap consisted of tourist bars and mobile phone shops. I didn’t expect it to be this touristy, to be honest, and the whole place seemed kind of false. I found an Irish bar and by mid-day everybody had joined me for the fateful Wales match about which I will say no more.

The tourist-cake was still due its icing and, after a recovery rest, we gathered at the hotel lobby for our farewell dinner. We were surprised to be greeted not by our three buses but by twenty-five tuck-tucks all lined up. This was the first hint that tonight was to be interesting. On we got and our long puttering parade made its way through the town and into the pitch-black forest. This bit has been difficult to write because I can’t figure out how to convey the feeling we got without resorting to cliche. As we pulled into a clearing, hearing deep chanting music rise out of the silence, a picture emerged of our destination and the hairs on my neck literally stood up. At first we saw what looked like a runway, except lit by two lines of about two-hundred candles stretching into the distance. Then as our eyes adjusted to the scene we saw that this path was lined all the way with what appeared to be guards carrying spears. At the end of the path was a small floodlit temple and standing at various places along the structure were silent monks dressed in orange. We were treated to chants, blessings, a great (though western) meal served at the foot of the temple and several traditional Cambodian dances. We ate from pristine white table-cloths in the middle of the jungle. They had floodlights covering all the paths so we could see where we were going and large fans to blow away the mosquitoes. What was even more impressive was that this whole event was designed for us – it’s not something that you can just book. Some major strings pulled here, it seems.

So that was that. We left for home the next day feeling privileged, lucky and slightly let-down by the non-Cambodian food. The first thing I did at home was cook one of Rick Stein’s Cambodian recipes. It was delicious.