readersummer asked: Hi Lena,

Me again. I remember a while back you and your boyfriend took a trip to south east asia and I wanted to ask you for some recommendations. I think I might only have 2.5 weeks there and definitely want to go to Thailand...which other country did you most enjoy/ would you recommend visiting? I was thinking of Laos or Cambodia? What kinds of things do you think I could fit in such a short amount of time?

Thanks,
Summer

First of all, I would recommend not doing what I did, which was to race through four countries (Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos) in 17 days. I could have easily spent two months in Southeast Asia and still not gotten around to everything I wanted to see and do. In the end, I kind of wished that I had a less extensive and a more intensive travel experience. That said, my favorite place was, by far, Cambodia.  I only spent three days in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, because I had a set itinerary that couldn’t be changed. I would suggest going with a semi-flexible schedule, because it’s hard to predict ahead of time where you’ll want to spend most of your trip. In large part, I enjoyed my time in Cambodia because I met the best tour guide of my entire trip: Sim Piseth, who also founded the non-profit Angkor Homestay. I’m still in touch with Sim and would recommend him to anyone interested in visiting the area.

(Side note: I’m embarrassingly ignorant of world history beyond the West, so I read up a little bit on the various places I planned to visit. For Cambodia, I recommend reading Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare, which is a downer (to use a huge understatement), but it does a good job contextualizing the country’s situation over the last few decades.