T A B L E_T A L K Great food, wine and down-to-earth people: Discuss the virtues of rural Provence in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Seduced by Kenya By Don George An interview with author Francesca Marciano about Africa's attractions and contradictions (10/09/98) This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news (10/09/98) Rules of the Wild By Francesca Marciano The seductive subculture of whites in Kenya -- and the addicting allure of Africa's vastness (10/08/98) Maiden voyage By Susanna Stromberg A 19-year-old finds lust and illusion on a Love Boat cruise to Alaska (10/07/98) Family values in Africa By David Kravitz An elephant herd teaches a dad and his teenage daughter a valuable lesson (10/06/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		(    (    U n d e r  t h e  m o o n  a t   Angkor Thom    )    ) --------The Cambodian ruins weaved an enchanting spell over the travelers ------------------ -- until soldiers surrounded them. BY KARIN MULLER | Cambodia: a scorched and thirsty land, smothered in dust and seared to an even shade of brown. It was a land of contradictions, its people shy and unobtrusive, greeting each other with inclined heads over prayer-folded hands while stepping over gutters filled with the spent shells of an ongoing war. The streets were wide and impossibly clean, the houses unassuming. Phnom Penh looked like a tidy, prosperous town that time had left behind, before the world discovered neon lights and traffic jams and fancy cars. Forgotten, it had fallen into disrepair, its buildings fading into graying pastels. Word of mouth led me to a serpentine alley, where I followed painted arrows and flaking cardboard signs to the famous Guesthouse Number Nine. Its rooms were little more than plywood boxes but it was filled to bursting with contented backpackers. They lay in hammocks under the grass-thatched roof of a simple dock and watched the setting sun turn the shallow lake around them to burnished gold. The expanse of water was a minor miracle in a desiccated land of parched fields and wizened trees. The final call to prayer at the nearby mosque heralded another evening ritual -- the gathering clouds of marijuana smoke that leaked slowly out of cocoonlike hammocks and the occasional shadowy face lit briefly by a flickering flame. Dangling hands protected bulging bags of pot, and conversation turned desultory as darkness fell. The next morning Jochen arrived, the brown countryside baked into the creases of his face from a long day's bus ride from Saigon. He barely paused to submit his passport at the Vietnamese embassy before reshouldering his pack. "We're going to Angkor Wat," he said. I had never had much use for ruins. Empty and silent, they told me little of the people who had once dwelled among them, their hopes and dreams, births and tragedies. Better, I thought, to share a bowl of soup with a living, breathing soul than to tramp among scattered stones and old bones. But the next thing I knew I was on the fast boat to Angkor, my guest house hammock bequeathed to another road-worn traveler. Siem Riem harbor was 220 miles away, a daunting distance in a land where fast could mean a water buffalo whipped into a trot. I secured a spot on the boat's crowded roof and prepared to make it my home for the next week or two. We cast off and accelerated smoothly through the glassy water, and when I next looked over the side we were cruising at nearly 35 miles per hour, faster than anything I had seen in Asia that wasn't blessed with wings. Fishermen swarmed the river, intent upon their morning's catch. The hours slid by, filled with scrolling images of nut-brown boys perched like spiders on the gunwales of their tiny boats, fingers busily winding in gossamer nets. Shanty huts listed precariously on steep red banks, occasionally interspersed by incongruously solid Muslim mosques, their golden turrets visible for miles. The river gradually widened, land and habitations fell away and the heavy silver sky reached down to touch the slate-gray lake. Mile after mile we sped, unmoving, trapped in a bubble between two unchanging horizons. Colors burned away under the relentless, glaring sun and bodies seemed to melt into the deck, flat and anonymous under broad-brimmed hats and carelessly knotted scarves. At last a seagull drifted sluggishly across our bow and soon a mirage of puddled mercury cut a line across the endless gray. It slowly congealed into a cluster of houses that seemed to be bobbing gently across the entrance to a hazy harbor. They really were floating, and we maneuvered among them, eventually mooring at a boathouse beside a lethal-looking flak gun, its muzzle pointed at imaginary sky-borne enemies. Siem Riem. Two well-armed soldiers jumped aboard and escorted the few foreigners into a launch of their own. They propped their machine guns against our backpacks and checked our passports, jotted down the details of our lives and warned us not to tarry between the harbor and the tiny town. An eager Honda-for-hire slung my pack over his front handlebars and patted the seat behind him. We quickly became friends through our mutual interest in the well-being of his motorbike, which suffered two punctures and a broken chain on the six-mile journey. I was so intent on our increasingly soggy back tire that I almost missed the town itself, carefully concealed under a thick layer of dust and completely prostrated by the heat. It seemed the quintessential outback capital, zoning laws and traffic jams still somewhere in the distant future, daily needs met largely by the surrounding fields. The only sop to tourism was a trinket shop or two, slumbering in obscurity between a herd of goats and a tire shop. Local values seemed accurately illustrated by the price list posted near the guest house door; a room cost a little more than two sodas, a liter of bottled water was dearer still and eggs were available only when the backyard chickens were in the mood. N E X T+P A G E | Artwork and soldiers in the temples