Flipping through my Lonely Planet about Cambodia, I came across a section about what to do when you find yourself in a landmine field. I had never thought I would ever need such information, but in Cambodia, this is reality. Millions of landmines and unexploded bombs are estimated to still be in the country, laid in the Khmer Rouge period or dropped by American planes that wanted to destroy Vietnamese supply lines during the Vietnam war.

A first-time visitor to Cambodia is inevitably presented with two things: the splendor of the ancient temples of Angkor, which form the country’s prime tourist attraction, and a horrific recent history of genocide. In the 1970s, under the rule of the Khmer Rouge, a fourth of the population was killed. How to write about this? What to say, where to start?

Number one on my personal must-see list for my trip to Southeast Asia was the temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Once the splendid center of the capital of the Khmer Empire (Angkor was the name of the city; ‘Wat’ means temple), today attracting millions of visitors per year – to this day, Angkor Wat is the largest religious building in the world.