Cambodia's crippled society has been crawling on its knees into the international community since the 1991 Paris Peace Accords and the subsequent 1993 UN supervised elections which resulted in Cambodia's first-ever democratically elected government. Sadly too many are crawling literally. Many Cambodians (perhaps one in every 100) are missing limbs after trodding upon land mines still buried in the countryside. Those not missing arms or legs are most assuredly missing relatives, victims of Pol Pot's murderous Khmer Rouge regime. Between 1975 and 1979 nearly a quarter of the population perished under the Khmer Rouge's demonic and genocidal reign. Today Cambodia offers travelers an opportunity to be awed by one of mankind's greatest achievements - Angkor Wat - and one of its most heinous crimes, the mass slaughter of over 2 million people.

In April 1975 Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge marched triumphantly into war-weary Phnom Penh, toppled the US-backed Lon Nol government, and announced the beginning of "Year Zero". The subsequent genocide visited upon this once proud and powerful kingdom was unprecedented in its savagery. Currency was abolished; towns and cities reduced to rubble. Phnom Penh's 1 million residents were gang-pressed into the countryside to work on collective farms. The total disintegration of an entire society took place in less time than it takes to earn a college degree. By the time the Vietnamese invaded in January 1979 an estimated 2 million Cambodians had lost their lives through execution, disease, malnutrition and exhaustion.

Today grim reminders are everywhere. In many areas across the tabletop-flat Khmer countryside, human bones punch through the soil, still clothed in tattered garments. Visiting the infamous killing fields outside Phnom Penh it's not unusual to come across human teeth sprinkled in the earth. Red signs depicting a skull and crossbones are tacked to trees or stapled to stakes beside the road warning of land mines. Some 6-10 million of them still remain. Each month about 150 Cambodians, many of them children, find one.

Despite what some might think of the current government's tactics to secure peace, there's a new optimism in Cambodia, a new stability - and tourism is soaring. Western tourists began trickling into Cambodia in 1992 when some 24,000 UN peacekeepers and US$2 billion were dispatched to uphold an uneasy ceasefire between the country's warring factions. Tourism - and the security of the country's national treasure, Angkor Wat - continues to be of vital importance to the government. In 2001 approximately 600,000 tourists visited the temples at Angkor, representing a nearly ten-fold increase in less than a decade. Siem Reap, home to Angkor Wat, now welcomes daily non-stop flights from Bangkok, Phuket and Saigon.

Though Cambodia is now enjoying an unprecedented state of "peace", we don't want to paint too pretty a picture here. In many ways the country remains the Wild West of East Asia and Phnom Penh is still the most dangerous capital city in Indochina. With the demise of the Khmer Rouge, former rebels - without a cause or money - have turned to looting, murder and mayhem. Petty crime is rampant in the capital and it doesn't appear to be ebbing. To the contrary, as more tourists arrive in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, so do more targets for a population in possession of some 500,000 guns. Only about half of the handguns and automatic rifles in circulation are in the hands of the army and police. Not surprisingly arguments are often settled by tossing a hand grenade or firing a pistol into the air. Killing, what many Cambodians seem to do best, has even become a tourist draw. For US$20 foreign tourists can head off to a field near Phnom Penh's Pochentong Airport where they rent assault rifles and B-40 rockets to take target practice at farm animals.

Though it's only an hour away by plane, Cambodia isn't Phuket. While the vast majority of visitors come away from Cambodia with little more than fabulous memories of this exotic, fascinating country, don't expect a Club Med or a bus tour of Scottish castles. The tourism infrastructure here is still embryonic. There are no tourism training schools in Cambodia, and the major infrastructure undertakings will have to be complemented by service sector programs and policies aimed at preserving both the environment and Cambodia's ancient relics. With better roads will come more pillaging of the country's some 1000 temples and easier access for illegal loggers to move their wares.

Since "peace" in the early 1990s, Cambodia has periodically relapsed into barbarity and self-destruction. It takes only a pinprick in this country to open a scar left by heart surgery. But Cambodians these days are searching the soul of their more distant past, rediscovering their ancient art forms and reaching toward a future that passed over this society some 40 years ago. Much as the stock market, the security situation will fluctuate, but overall the tide is rising. The bottom line is that now is the safest time to travel here in the past four decades. It has never been as easy, nor has it ever been as gratifying and fulfilling.