The magical essence of Cambodia

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There is something different about Cambodia. There is an unexplained, magical feeling about this Kingdom. It effects all the people who visit this wonderful country.

I recently travelled to Cambodia with 15 other students for 10 days, and I was left spellbound. At first I would not have thought a place like this would have such an affect on people, but obviously I was wrong.

Cambodia is in the heart and soul of Buddhism in South East Asia. This Buddhist influence has also expanded through other near by countries. Cambodians take their religion seriously, and I'm not surprised. Cambodians are religious, and their religion and spirituality reflects in their daily life. For example, offerings at the temples, offerings to the spirits and visiting fortune tellers. They seem very happy and contended people.

In the northern province of Cambodia lies the temples of Angkor. This place is so mysterious, magical and essential. It is a place is a city of temples, and with towers so high only the Gods are meant to see the tops.

These temples represent Cambodia's catastrophic past and represents hope for the future for this war-torn country. But how else to describe a country where graceful temples and golden Buddhas rise above the killing fields left by the Khmer Rouge? A land full of contrasts, just like the people.

Our journey to Cambodia began on the 24th November, 2008, flying into northern region, Siem Reap. Siem Reap is a small dusty town, where many tourists from the corners of the Earth come to see one of the wonders of the world, the Khmer Kingdom on Angkor.

I was very excited to visit Angkor. With over 100 stone temples that are thousands of years old, Angkor stretches over many miles to the rural parts of Cambodia.

We visited a handful full of temples throughout our time in Cambodia. But the greatest experience I witnessed was seeing the sunrise over Angkor Watt temple. This was absolutely breath taking.

This is just the reason why we came to this country. Pictures in this area speak for themselves. I can not start describing how much of a wonderful part of the country this is. It is full of history, spirituality and religion and just a few words from me just would not do it justice.

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