New guidebook

Whilst sat at breakfast on Saturday morning in the Mekong Crossing restaurant on the riverside in Kompong Cham, I spotted the brand-new 2008 guidebook, Ultimate Cambodia Travel Guide, written by Matt Jacobson, and geared towards the more adventurous traveller to the country. It's the most up to date guide on Cambodia as we speak - although the new Lonely Planet is in the final throes of editing - and Jacobson has now gone solo, after co-authoring the guidebook's forerunner, Adventure Cambodia. It's on the same theme, getting under the skin of the country, identifying the key places to visit, usually by motorbike and includes GPS co-ordinates for the 'real adventurers' as well as containing maps, mileage, photos and suggested routes in its 500 pages. Published by Coastal Books, it will cost you $24 from Monument Books in Phnom Penh, and should be available in photocopy format around about now at a street stall near you (this is tongue in cheek, as I am vehemently against this form of copyright theft)! I used some of its information for my visit to Phnom Theat Pros & Srei and whilst the mileage was spot on, I was told a very different story by the locals on my visit, to the one quoted in the guidebook. I also find the phonetic spelling of the various sites very frustrating, but that's just a personal foible.