Decision

Among all the countries that I wished to visit, Cambodia is definitely not at the top of the queue.

I first heard of this country at the age of 5. At that time, radio stations were broadcasting all the activities carried out by the Red Khmer and the war between Vietnam and Cambodia. One thing funny about war, the winner always seems to be a bigger bully. At the age of 5, I thought of Vietnam as a bigger bully, they defeated even the Americans.

Angor Wat was another weird name that left me very deep impression. Probably because it sounds like "Uncle Wat", and you know, in Cantonese, 'Wat' carries the meaning of "accuse". So this uncle is very good in accusing people.

After we'd been to China and India, we fell deeply in love with ancient civilisation. Some people travel to see beautiful nature sceneries but we got addicted to all the ancient rocks, ruins and historical artefacts. In year 2010, we planned a trip to Egypt, but the plan fell out due to all the big incidents took place around me. In the beginning of the year, I was diagnosed with stage 3 NPC (Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma, or Nose Cancer in layman term). The 6 months of treatment almost got me killed. Just when I started to resume my normal life, my dad passed away with terminal stage stomach cancer. The pain of losing the loved one is unbearable. Still, life need to move on. Avoiding seems to be quite a good solution for this, but the more we suppress our emotions, the more depress we became.

In order to get this out, and also to reward my wife as my care-giver during my treatment, I started to plan for a trip despite my unstable conditions. Egypt seems to be far too challenging for me, be it distance, climate or the itinerary. During the treatment, I was hit by Claustrophobia. I had problem even sitting in a car, so really no confident to fly long distance. Then I started to consider South Korea, Borobudur of Indonesia, and finally I locked the target at Cambodia. It's not far from Singapore, just a 2-hour flight, the weather is nice in January, cost is acceptable, we don't need more than a week for the trip, and most importantly, it matched the criteria of 'ancient civilisation'.

We spent some time looking for a nice package, and finally we settled down with one offer by X tour agency '6D5N Modern & Ancient Cambodia'.