Have your steps brought you to the off-the-beaten-track –to put it mildly- city of Preah Vihear? The odds are you are either badly lost, a masochist, or visiting the Prasat Preah Vihear, trying to expereience what a  a UXO looks like from near…
The city is uninteresting and you are otherwise about to spend your days in your hotel, so choose a good one (like the Preah Vihear Boutique Hotel, which is just fine, although the restaurant specialties taste a bit like odourless soap…).
But the Prasat Preah Vihear will compensate you! This magnificent temple, more a city actually than a temple, has been for centuries the source of tensions and war, and fire was exchanged as recently as 2011 between the Thai and the Cambodian army. The chronically unpaid Cambodian soldiers lost the battle, but the Thai lost the battle in court and the monument was returned to the Cambodians who have filled it with even more soldiers, mostly living under what seems a permanent siesta time. Nowadays, the jurisprudence evoked by Amal Alamuddin, the wife of George Clooney and top lawyer employed by the Greek government in order to get back the marbles of Parthenon in the British Museum, refers mainly to Preah Vihear and how it was against the odds returned to the weaker part: as improbable as having a court give back Israeli ground to the Palestinians and the Israelis accept the decision, but sometimes miracles happen, or so seems to believe Amal Alamuddin…
Ater visiting the temple and living the potentially back-breaking (…) experience of mounting to it by a wild 4X4 (the road is too steep for normal cars or buses to climb) while the driver watches unceasingly while driving action movies, it is time to call it a day and head to your hotel and just wait it until your next days’ route to Siem Reap: Preah Vihear is not exactly glamorous, and the road to Siem Reap long...

The pictures

The postcards