ESSENTIALS

Where to stay

In Siem Reap: Central Boutique Angkor Hotel is a chic little outfit with charming staff, a small swimming pool and a garden filled with orchids. It’s about a 10-minute drive from Angkor Wat temple complex. Doubles from US$75 (£58) per night B&B. centralboutique angkorhotel.com

In Phnom Penh: The Kabiki is a beautifully devised small hotel set in a French colonial mansion close to the Royal Palace and the large monastery Wat Botum. Doubles from $55 per night B&B. maads.asia/ kabiki

Kampot province: Champa Lodge is a laid-back riverside haven. Its five bedrooms are in traditional stilted houses that were rescued and rebuilt in this picturesque location. Doubles from $46 per night B&B. champalodge.com

What to see

Entrance to the Angkor temples is covered by a pass. In an effort to cap the number of visitors to this World Heritage Site, costs recently shot up: a day is $37, three days costs $62 and a week $72. tourismcambodia. com

Champey Academy of Arts, Street 19, Phnom Penh welcomes visitors and stages performances most afternoons. Recommended donation $5. champey academy.org

Red tape

British visitors to Cambodia need a visa. This can be arranged on arrival at Phnom Penh or Siem Reap airports or at border crossings with Thailand or Vietnam. You need two passport photographs and cash payment of $35. snacks in Cambodia. These looked more daunting than they tasted. Silkworms were chewy, beetles crunchy, crickets crisp (and our favourite) and tarantulas well spiced – we shied away from eating a whole spider and nibbled on the legs instead. We moved on to taste a variety of rice cake packages wrapped in leaves and variously cooked with beans and bananas.

We would subsequently have free time in Phnom Penh, so we asked Cham what we should do. Most tourists, he said, go to Phnom Penh’s Killing Fields Museum to learn about the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, but why not explore living Cambodia instead? So as he suggested, we later visited Champey Academy of Arts, which stages shows in the afternoons. A non-profit school, it is helping to revive the country’s traditional arts by giving free tuition to young dancers, painters and musicians. We watched several engaging dances by 12-yearolds and called in on a rehearsal of a pinpeat orchestra complete with gongs and xylophones. Then we took a look next door at the glorious old monastery of Wat Sarawan. The head monk ushered us into its hall and in almost perfect English began a discussion about the correlation between mindfulness and Buddhism.

Philosophy to farmland, the next morning we travelled three hours south to Kampot Province. It’s the up-and-coming tourist destination, I’d been told. It is fringed by a calm coast, its limestone landscape has intriguing caves containing hidden temples, and it is eye-poppingly lush. Everything grows here; rice, durian, turmeric and particularly pepper (during the era of French rule no self-respecting Parisian restaurant would be without Kampot pepper).

It sounded idyllic, but proved poignant. The region was sapped by the Khmer Rouge and still suffers the legacy today, our guide, Dara, told us. From our rustic-chic hotel in fields near the eponymous town of Kampot he had taken us to see a 7th-century cave temple and a newly revived pepper plantation (spearheaded by a Belgian-French couple – entrepreneurial energy comes only from outside the area Dara said).

We moved on to the seaside town of Kep. In French colonial days it was a sort of mini Nice, lined with glamorous art deco villas. Today those buildings are derelict, some sporting graffiti, some with bullet holes visible. Dara told us how the government has been trying to redevelop tourism here, importing sand for the beach and widening the approach road. We stopped at Kep’s large fish market and then wandered disconsolately along its seafront, deserted save for a band of menacing monkeys. As we drove back to our hotel, the sun was setting and the rosy light lent the rice fields an ethereal quality. It was heartbreakingly beautiful.

The writer travelled with Rickshaw Travel (01273 322399; rickshawtravel. co.uk) whose trips around Cambodia includes four days at Angkor from £248, covering guiding, transport and accommodation (Phare Circus evening is £35 extra); two days at a Tonle Sap lake homestay at £215; three days in Phnom Penh from £225, covering accommodation and guiding; and three days in Kampot province at £225 covering countryside accommodation and day tour. Prices are pp based on two sharing. A minimum of three bite-sized trips is required to build an itinerary. The company also arranges flights – from £455 via Hong Kong.