Conference in Cambodia

Something different this week! I accompanied a delegation up to a conference in Cambodia - somewhere I'd never been before (and never expected to go to be honest). It takes about twenty hours to get there, through Singapore, but none of the flights themselves are longer than seven hours, so it's not  super long haul.

It was all entirely working, from breakfast meetings to conference sessions all day to dinners in the evening, but one of the days was a tour day where they took us around the truly amazing Angkor temples. I was completely ignorant about Cambodian history so it was very educational for me :) and the buildings themselves are stunning. This is me feeling pretty warm at Bayon.  A couple of climbs up stone steps in the heat and I was feeling like a very fat and pale Australian.



This is Ta Phrom where the trees grow through the ruins ... it just feels like exactly what ruins are meant to be (too many Hollywood movies...). It is dry season so there was lots of dust and not much grass - pleasanter for tourists I think. And of course we went to Angkor Wat, which is enormous and amazing! I am a very lucky duck to get to do these things, not least of which because Canberra had its warmest week on record - four days over 40 degrees - so I was quite pleased to be somewhere only 32 and very efficiently air-conditioned.