First thoughts on Cambodia

September 5, 2010

I'm still on the last of my three fligths back from Cambodia, drafting this post on my iPhone but i felt some first freshly squeezed thoughts on it might balance out the upcoming more thorough writings by my man Kaste (he promissed them in exchange of me writing for his travel log).

I had meant to do it before the trip but lazyness, work and other circumstances postponed buying a book (besides the ever present Lonely Planet) about Cambodia to the last minute. Ah, the last minute, hadn't it existed, so many things'd never happen...

In any case, I saved myself from boredom on a rainy and lonely evening in Bangkok the day before flying to Phom Pehn by picking up from one of the many bookstores in Kaosan Road a rip-off copy of "Gecko Tails: A Journey through Cambodia" by Carol Livingston. It portraits through the funny, cinical and touching eyes of a westerner expat the ambiance that surrounded the country in the '90s during and right after the UN hosted the first democratic elections in many years. I've just finished it a few minutes ago and probably this piece taken from its last pages sums it up better than anything else I could say; 15 years later, it couldn't sound more right to me.