I went to my office late at night and the offer was on my phone machine.

Four days in Cambodia, all expenses paid in exchange for a story.

The sponsor and host was the very famous Raffles International Hotel Company,

which I'd never heard of.

Could I leave in two days?

I glanced at my Union Pacific appointment calendar blank for the

entire month. One day getting there, one day getting back, about a week altogether, no problem.

What I knew of Cambodia was this. We bombed it pretty bad during the Vietnam War, and then

there was a communist revolution where one, maybe two million people

died. But that was 20 years ago. It might be a very nice place by now. I called back and said

my bag was already packed. There were five of us, all except for myself, professional travel writers from such publications as town and country and national geographic traveler.

We flew business class on a 747, lots of legroom and private televisions that came up out of the armrests, wine and alcohol, exotic

fruit juices, salmon and lobster, and my favorite, hot towels for my hands and face.

It took 20 hours with a stop in Tokyo, so I had time to read up a bit on the hotel company

and Cambodia. Raffles International specializes in renovating grand hotels,

the Raffles House in Singapore being most famous. The company has recently renovated two French

colonialist hotels in Cambodia, the Hotel La Royale in the capital of Pan Pan

and the Grand Hotel de Anc in Seymre, a small town

near the ancient temples of the encore civilization. Unfortunately, almost nobody had been visiting

Cambodia lately. Just as the millions and millions of dollars in renovations in both hotels

were being completed, The Cambodian

government went to war with itself. There were tanks squaring off in the streets shooting at

...