Holiday You?: 'Bye 'Bye Cambodia! So Long Southeast Asia!

Two lovely sisters and one long-armed photographer in Angkor Borei, Cambodia

A while back, a friend e-mailed that it seemed we'd really "gotten rooted" in this part of the world. It's true, we've been in the countries of what is referred to as SE Asia since late December 2006 - over a year. My friend sent that e-mail back in June. At the time and after, I worried that we may have stayed in this area too long. We should have been out covering more diverse ground. We should have picked a less developed region. Yada, yada, yada... Now that our time here is coming to an end, though, I'm very happy we landed where we did.

I think we've gone slowly enough and stayed long enough to say we got a fair taste of SE Asia. And on reflection, if you're going to get rooted someplace on this planet, SE Asia isn't a bad place at all to have that happen. My biggest worry was that this area has seen budget travelers for over thirty years - lots of travelers. Even so, we still found plenty of interesting and inspiring things to do.

I never doubted that lingering somewhere was going to get into my heart. I just had no clear preconception of how that would manifest itself in my feelings. Now, during the last days in this region, feelings of sadness and satisfaction come strongly. We could have landed anywhere. For a number of reasons, we could easily have not stopped. We did, though, and Southeast Asia has, despite my initial misgivings, turned out to have been an excellent choice.

See for yourself...