Cambodia

Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument on earth and it still surprises - not just in scale but in the particular silence of its outer galleries at dawn, before the groups arrive. Cambodia built this and much else in the Khmer Empire's four-century flowering, and then went through the twentieth century's worst per-capita catastrophe. The country that emerged is carrying both of those facts simultaneously, with a resilience that is not performed. Phnom Penh is a river capital of real complexity; the coast around Kep and Kampot is one of Southeast Asia's last genuinely unhurried shorelines.

Our guide is being written from the ground up, with the time this place deserves.

We are still gathering the notes that make a guide worth keeping: Angkor temple timings, Phnom Penh's riverside, Kampot pepper farm routes and the fish amok kitchens where the recipe has not been adjusted for outside palates.