Vox Pops

I was almost drunk on excitement when I landed in Cambodia. It looked so foreign as we descended. There were no homes as such to be seen in Siem Reap (near the airport anyway), just a vast expanse of flooded rice paddies, as far as the eye could see. I'd been nervous about the Cambodian visa - I made an effort to learn some Cambodian phrases before I disembarked to make sure I sweetened up the immigration officers, and it worked. Ah kohn is thank you in Cambodian, by the way. I had also been nervous about coming to Cambodia in the first place. I'd heard varying reports on how safe it was to travel there, with pickpockets, robberies and scams apparently commonplace. Also, I'd never been to a country which had been in a recent civil war before, with such horrific consequences. I wondered how much of this would remain in the Cambodian psyche and way of life? I was picked up by Tom from my hostel - he was riding an open tuk tuk pulled along by his scooter. I was stupidly excit