The New York Times has a nice feature on Cambodia re-emerging as a tourist destination.

It sounds like Cambodia is on the mend, which is very good news. Thank god the horror of the Khmer Rouge is well and truly gone, especially now that the unspeakably vile Pol Pot is dead, and his last followers either dead, in prison, or, not quite so happily, functionaries in the current government, having been granted amnesty for turning themselves in.

It's helpful too that Cambodia is safer for tourists, as the money visitors spend there can only help.

I spent a month there in 1994. Then, it was still a dangerous, uneasy, surreal place. I saw and experienced things that still make me shudder when I think about them. The depth of suffering of so many Cambodians and the visible effects of it were heartbreaking. Too, Phnom Penh's status as an anarchic, gunslinging haven for terribly dissipated and depraved career ex-pats was deeply disturbing. You're not supposed to OD on heroin, brandish an AK-47, and get killed when you're on vacation...however permanent. Those kinds of things happened...more than once.

It was a difficult but intensely eye-opening experience. I wouldn't have recommended it to the faint of heart. Happily, it sounds as if real peace and stability have begun to take hold. I'm hopeful and glad that Cambodians have a chance at a more safe and prosperous future, and if those of us with the means to travel abroad can help by visiting, then I think that's a good thing too.