Yeah, I know, ridiculous. Cambodia? How can that be the best country in the entire world? For a start, most people can’t place it on a map. This includes close relatives of mine who are studying geography at A Level. They know all about the Marxist topography of urbanism, but Cambodia, err, um, is that near Africa?
Also, Cambodia?? Isn’t that the country that suffered a fearsome Maoist genocide within living memory, with a quarter of its population dying by execution, torture, famine and disease, and the rest left so hungry they resorted to eating giant spiders roasted in tomato powder?
The landscape is agreeably green, the jungles are often untouched, the islands can be Edenic (but primitive)
Well yes, it is. But I have spent the last year – and indeed several decades – travelling the world, and the last three months travelling all over Indochina, especially Cambodia, and I can report that, quite remarkably, it has a claim to be the best country on earth, right now.
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