The best address in Phnom Penh is the graceful Raffles Hotel Le Royal.  It’s all you would expect of one of Asia’s great classic hotels.  An elegant French colonial building, with cool black and white tiled floors, a dark wood staircase – that responds satisfyingly to your step as you walk down – high ceilings, louvered shutters and overhead fans. This is the hotel where The New York Times’ Sydney Schanberg and the worlds’ reporters stayed during the war; there is a cocktail – Femme Fatale – named after Jackie O  – and beautiful, perfumed gardens.  It’s also very romantic and very now: ginger scented candles flicker in the lobby, there’s movies under the stars in the gardens in the dry season, the serene staterooms are being refurbished by young designers and a new generation of Cambodian artists have woven the fabrics and drawn the murals in the Elephant Bar (good for a Martini after a hot day’s exploring).

Outside, it’s the 1980s – there are so few high rise buildings, you notice them.  The National Museum is stuffed with centuries of artefacts from the Angkor period, and the Silver Pagoda and Royal Palace  are big on bling and good fun.  There’s optimism in the air and the people are charming.  Get around on a tuk-tuk, dodging the awesome, anarchic traffic (how many people can you get on a motorbike?). 

And because this is Phnom Penh, you will visit Tuol Sleng Genocide Musuem – in the former S-21 centre, the school that was turned into a prison and torture centre by the Khmer Rouge.   Every prisoner was photographed and a confession wrested out of them.  Incredibly sad, but not to acknowledge the horror would be disrespectful.  Another necessary visit is to The Killing Fields memorial, a half hour drive out of town at Choeung Ek.  Hire a guide to get a full understanding of the atrocities that took place here.  In Cambodia, no-one is unaffected by the recent past. 

Phnom Penh is a brilliant, bustling city on the make, resilient and optimistic.  Top tips:  the US dollar is king,  so take wads of small notes.   Hold onto your bag – and go soon.  Is this the next Shanghai or Singapore?  We hope not. 

On to Siem Reap, home to Angkor – more than one hundred stunning temples and ruins, the remains of a city which covered more than  1,000 sq metres.  Angkor was the capital of the ancient Cambodian empire which dominated mainland South-East Asia from the 9^th to the 14^th century – the biggest pre-industrial metropolis on our planet.  Each new King of Angkor built a temple.  Dating from the 9^th-13^th century, these eye-popping monuments are feast of carving, murals, reliefs, that ooze atmosphere and awesomeness.  (How did they DO that?)  There’s the big daddy Angkor Wat itself;  Bayon, at the centre of Ankor Thom, known for its multiple faces, carved on the towers;  Ta Prohm, (don’t call it the Tomb Raiders one!)  with its massive banyan roots snaking over and around it.  The big ones can be done in a day (an opportunity to wear a serious hat and factor 50) but there are plenty of other sites and temples – check out the LUXE Guide to Cambodia and Laos. 

High Season is the Dry Season – November to February – but don’t dismiss the considerably cheaper wet season:  June to September.  It only rains for a couple of hours every afternoon.  The mornings are fresh and less hot (high 20s early 30s) it’s humid but do-able.  During the rain local life carries on.  For visitors this is a period of enforced inactivity – unless you fancy getting warmly drenched.  Hit the spa.  Read a book.  Take up yoga.  Have a fish pedicure in town.  Learn to meditate.  Or just take time out to think and be.  And come home quids in.   The hotel that ticks all the boxes – for atmosphere, colonial charm, spa, food – is Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor.  It’s all about the staff.  They really do care about you.   Try the delicious Khmer food  - small amounts of ingredients with intriguing textures, wonderful aromas and gorgeous fresh flavours – with fish and shellfish from the Mekong and Tonlé Sap rivers.  All the food is cooked to Buddhist guidelines.  Don’t miss the Banana Flower Salad with Grilled Prawn and Smoked Fish and the Steamed Elephant Fish with Ginger, Scallions and Shitake Mushrooms.   The hotel has a huge pool – the biggest in Cambodia, good for doing the laps in the morning.   The two incredibly private garden villas, with their big verandas, are being transformed by exciting designers and will finished this autumn.    And best of all, is where it is – opposite the King’s villa, surrounded by private gardens.  Very hard to leave.

Cambodia is a place of colour, vibrancy and beauty.  Of magical temples, mysterious music and fragrant flowers.  The people are graceful and kind.  There is sadness, inevitably, 1975 is not so far away.  But there’s an energy, a feeling that finally they are coming to terms with the past and looking towards the future.  Check out the exquisite silk clothes by Siem Reap-based designer Eric Raisina whose recent commissions include work for Christian Lacroix.  And then visit Artisans d’Angkor the fair trade company that reviving traditional Cambodian fine arts and crafts by giving young people from rural villages highly-skilled training in stone and wood carving, lacquering and gilding and silk weaving.  The workshops are in Siem Reap,  but if you don’t have time to visit them, you can pick up examples of their work at the airport at Phnom Penh and Siem Reap.  The perfect memento of an extraordinary country.  Go now.