Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Tuesday the 25th of November.

That means it's a month till Christmas and where better to escape the cold midwinter than in, say, Southeast Asia.

Even better. That part of it known as Indo-China, and even better than that, the nation of Cambodia.

It's a place I first visited in 1993.

Yes, I was very young, thanks, and that was way before, I think, my excellent colleague, Global Travel Editor, Annabel Grossman, was born.

But you've just returned from there.

I have, yes.

So I was born when you first visited or when you last visited in the 90s, but I was very young.

And I imagine Cambodia looked rather different then to when I visited a couple of weeks ago. I think it's

quite interesting. Simon, you sent me through the article that you had written after visiting

in the early 90s was it. And I read that while I was Iipton-on-Fa-en. And actually, although things do

look a little bit different, there were so many similarities that I noticed straight away.

Number one, I think it might be one of the

most welcoming and friendly countries that I've ever visited. And that's something I always look out for

when I'm traveling and when I'm recommending places to travel is to visit places where people

really want you there and that you can be a real benefit to the country as a traveller.

It's a good place to spend your tourist dollars.

And I felt that from the article you wrote,

that people were interested in you, but it wasn't overwhelming.

It was friendly and welcoming, but without being too kind of stressful.

In the early 1990s, it was just recovering from the terrible Pol Pot era in which there was the most dreadful genocide. And actually, the way you would get around Cambodia was

basically spotting a United Nations land cruiser and flagging it down. And if you were a European,

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