On 18th June, my final morning in Siem Reap, I decided to strike out on my own, and wandered up the road from the hotel in the direction of the temples. I had the idea of going up a hill that I had seen, called Phnom Bakheng, and to then spend another hour at Angkor Wat, before heading back to pack for the flight. A motorcyclist stopped and offered me a ride but when I mentioned the hill he shook his head enthusiastically and said “Khmer Rouge!”. He didn’t speak English, but he mimed things exploding on the ground, so I suspect there are landmines there.

So I wandered towards Angkor Wat again, via a little little farm near the edge where some children were excited to find a tourist near their home.

One of the boys decided he would pretend to be a robber, and waving a stick at me pretending it was a gun. I played along, they all giggled with delight, and eventually a couple of them came and had their photo taken with Angkor Wat behind.

Wandering back through, I was struck again by the magnitude of this place, imagining how it would have looked 1000 years ago. As the capital of the ancient Khmer Empire, that sprawled over half of Laos and Thailand, it would have been teeming with people, architects, engineers, artists, sculptors. Today there was just me… and a couple of Buddhist monks.

I spent well over an hour walking a full circuit of the outer gallery, pausing every metre or two to admire the fine details, and phenomenal scale, of the exquisite bas relief carvings. It was like watching a documentary film, made 1000 years ago by the people who created this stunning monument. There was nobody to distract me – I didn’t see a single other person the whole time – and as a result I became immersed in the magic, and long-dead sculptors could take me back in time to show me their world…

One day, Cambodia will be open for tourism, and possibly thousands of people per day will swarm along these ancient terraces and galleries. But right now, today, this morning, the entire thing is just for me…

In the afternoon, the same 5 passengers were at the airport for the flight back to Phnom Penh. The same An42 duly filled with “smoke” as we took off…

At Phnom Penh airport there was great excitement in the terminal. The one-and-only long-haul international flight to Cambodia had just landed. A sleek white Tupolev Tu-154 of Aeroflot was sitting on the ramp, having arrived from Moscow an hour previously on its weekly visit. I said farewell to Charlie, and headed for the Samaki Hotel once more.