It is a huge and terrifying structure. It's no surprise that the first reaction most people have to the Bokor Palace is to be instantly reminded of the nightmarish hotel from the film The Shining. And like its fictional counterpart, the ground the Palace sits upon is blood-soaked.

What's astounding about Cambodia isn't the choking density of the tropical rainforest, or the glorious majesty of Angkor Wat, or the power of the mighty Mekong River. (Well, actually, all of those are astounding, but none are the astounding bit I'm talking about here.)

A wooden sign tells us it’s a 3 kilometer walk to the elephants, and a 4 kilometer walk to some waterfalls. With the midday sun pounding on our backs it doesn’t take us long to agree that a dip in the falls might be in order after our visit with the elephants.

We decided that what we needed was a beach. We needed to luxuriate among white sands and turquoise waters. We needed to replace the omnipresent roaring of engines and honking of horns with the gentle sounds of surf lapping against shore.

One minute, we had thousands of cars flying by on one side and hundreds of pedestrians flying by on the other. The next minute, every singe lane of the street was empty, and every pedestrian had stopped in his tracks.