Stylist’s associate editor (beauty), Joanna McGarry, finds enlightenment on a honeymoon among the temples and tropical islands of Cambodia’s ancient kingdom

I hate the word ‘honeymoon’. All those couples-only beach resorts; everyone jostling for sun loungers and fussy candlelit dinners on a floating piece of wood. That’s not us. We didn’t want that for the first holiday we’d take as husband and wife. We wanted to have our eyes opened by the world. We wanted to explore and discover a culture unlike our own – and dare I say it – get a bit spiritual. Cambodia, we decided, ticked all the boxes.

After a 28-hour journey, we landed in the north-western province of Siem Reap, gateway to Cambodia’s majestic temples, built over 900 years ago by the ruling kings.

In an effort to avoid the busloads of tourists (and their plague of selfie sticks), we hired a temple guide to help frame this ancient world into bite-sized chunks of trivia. We even took his advice to visit Angkor Wat – the largest of the temples – at 4am. Built as a tribute to the Hindu god, Vishnu, this intricate mass of stone is breathtaking to behold, somehow more entrancing in moonlight. Over the next two days we trekked through a further 11 temples, until they began to fall into each other in my mind.

Harder to forget, however, were the small children circling the temple gates, cheerily selling souvenirs. It’s a place woven in paradox; everywhere I look, scenes of abject poverty rub up against the majesty of a city that was once the largest in the world. Since then, Cambodia has been through hell and back. The civil war that erupted between 1965 and 1975 annihilated 25% of its total population – two million people. Today, over one third of the population lives below the poverty line, on less than $2 per day.

On a ground level though, all is merry. The children we saw were buoyant and happy enough playing football with a bottle top. And, the poverty rate more than halved between 2004 and 2011. The Cambodian locals were kind, open and almost apologetically polite. This gentle demeanour is the upshot of a culture that has oscillated between Hinduism and Buddhism; religions which promote non-violence and inner calm.

Escape routes: find serenity among the temples of Cambodia