If itâ¿™s Thursday it must be Cambodia

Four Asian countries in under eight days sounds more like an endurance test than a luxury holiday. But in the case of the week-long whistle-stop tour of southeast Asia from which I have just returned, the luxury helps the endurance no end.

Four Asian countries in under eight days sounds more like an endurance test than a luxury holiday. But in the case of the week-long whistle-stop tour of southeast Asia from which I have just returned, the luxury helps the endurance no end.

You leave Heathrow late at night and find yourself heading for your hotel in the middle of the next afternoon. But everythingâ¿™s all right: the uniformed taxi-driver hands you a pristine white towel to dab your face; and the air-conditioned sweetness of the Bangkok Oriental will soon be washing away the last sour taste of the city you have left behind. Thereâ¿™ll be the drinks and the flowers and the warm and gracious smiles, and the breathtaking view over the Chao Phrya River from your window.

Your journey will be your excuse for the jet-lag massage which the hotel will book for you. It takes place at The Spa, across the river, so your warm-up masseuse is the Chao Phrya breeze, caressing you lightly as you cross on the ferry. You will then shed the cargo of stress that you brought with you from home, during an hour on the mattress at the mercy of the young Thai expert and her oils. Soft lights, soft music, soft fingers and palms ⿦ it⿙s all so friendly and generous that you might fear for your ability to deal ever again with the ordinary cruelty of everyday life.

Massage over, you can slip out on to the terrace overlooking the river, and enjoy local food so succulent that you will be forced to adjust the level of esteem in which you hold your favourite Thai restaurant back home. And back home they donâ¿™t provide real boats for you to watch as you crack and gouge your lobster, boats that have taken the trouble to adorn themselves with lights so that you can pick out their distinctively Asian contours.Given that you have two nights in Thailand and that the first was so smooth, you might decide the second one should be rougher. After any river cruise and temple tour you opt for, I recommend the Night Market on Silom Road. Thai and tourist alike blend into the endless procession of stalls, an experience that is more carnival than shopping. Work out what youâ¿™re willing to spend, take twice as much as youâ¿™re bound to get a bit carried away, leave the rest of your cash with your passport and tickets in the safe in your room, and take a cheap taxi to a shopping paradise. You might buy a watch that stops the day after you leave Bangkok, or you might score a designer dream in silk or leather. And the price you pay might be 10 times what the previous customer paid for the same thing. Or it might be one tenth that figure.

After this exposure to the rude vigour of eastern capitalism, Cambodia reminds you with a jolt that most of the world is still battling at the level of survival. To fly across the border from Bangkok to Siem Reap â¿“ an hourâ¿™s journey â¿“ is to cross from a place of sensual congeniality to a place that has not fully woken from the nightmare of its recent history. The name Siem Reap means â¿œdefeat of the Thaisâ¿¿, and refers to battles of 400 years ago. Today it seems heavily ironic, given the wildly varying fortunes of the two neighbours. Women in this country seriously outnumber men as a result of the extended civil war, and large swathes of Cambodia are still littered with landmines. You should remind yourself that the country needs a growing army of tourists to help it awake fully to 21st-century normality.

The five-star Grand Hotel dâ¿™Angkor was once the headquarters of the Khmer Rouge. It has been restored to its French colonial elegance, and appears cleansed of that sinister association. The legacy of the architects of the Killing Fields is not in any disturbing chill in the atmosphere: it is in the more mundane and concrete fact that in order to ensure a entirely reliable power and water supply, and keep its delightfully appointed swimming pool full, the hotel must maintain its own generator and water source.

The Siem Reap hotels are shimmering oases in a desert of underdevelopment. Yet 700 years ago the kings of this country built a whole series of temple complexes â¿“ Hindu and Buddhist â¿“ that have survived wars ancient and modern, and today bear monumental witness to the power of the human spirit. Your first sight of Angkor Wat will be across the moat that surrounds it. Distant carved towers rise above the perimeter walls, promising those who walk up the causeway to the huge stone entrance that they are about to gain access to some great mystery.

There is a sense of colossal labour here. Only the pavements are left uncarved, and even these stones bear the marks â¿“ round recesses for poles â¿“ of the drudgery of elephants. As for the vast acres of walls and pillars, not a square inch is without its pattern or picture, testifying to armies of craftsmen employed to rather better effect than the armies of warriors whose only legacy is the occasional scar of mortar-blasted stone.

Your bus will take you on to the Angkor Thom complex, with its causeway lined on either side by a 100 metre-long stone cobra. Each stone snake is mounted by, on the left, dozens of Mr Nices, who all resemble one another, and on the right, a parade of Mr Nasties, who look ugly in dozens of different ways. Inside are snapshots of 12th-century Khmer life â¿“ animals, boats, wars, Chinese traders, fish, crocodiles, markets, lovers.

The Bayon temple, in contrast, has one theme, which is a face â¿“ or rather, an expression. Clamber its steps or wander through its passageways and courtyards, and you will find the same Buddha lookalike gazing out at you. I gazed back at one of these faces for a while and understood, or thought I understood, why so many people had gone to such trouble to carve them. The expression speaks of the discovery of something that is the opposite of evil.

The Eastern & Oriental Express has rolled from Bangkok through Thailand and Malaysia to Singapore since 1993, but it is appointed with the veneers and lacquered panels that speak eloquently of the 1930s. Thankfully, the waiters and attendants manage to be helpful, without any sickly colonial deference. If you are tempted to complain about the limited choice on the menu, think again. The alternative is the illusion of variety offered by the banned microwave oven.

As the rubber trees and rice paddies of the East roll for two days past your window â¿“ punctuated, if you are lucky, by the occasional gaudy 100ft Buddha reclining in the middle of nowhere â¿“ you will no doubt reflect that there are worse places to be.

Naturally, you get off the train now and then. Thereâ¿™s the bridge over the River Kwai to see, and a riverboat journey to the Chong Kai War Cemetery, where 1,750 British and Allied war dead are buried. These men, in their teens, 20s and 30s, were starved and tortured to death by the Japanese as they slave-built in one year a railway that the best Japanese engineers said would take five years to finish. Three miles away at Kanchanaburi war cemetery, another 6,982 men lie under the ground.

Penang provides a less sombre excursion. The main town of this island off the coast of Malaysia is Georgetown, and it boasts an abundance of charming buildings in its old quarter. A line of rickshaws complete with man-power and green umbrella will be waiting to take you to them. The simultaneous slow launch of 50 of these machines and their human payload into the old streets of Georgetown provides one of the more surreal sights of the week.

Then itâ¿™s back to the en suite shower, the dressing for dinner, and the saloon bar with piano that stays open as late as you like. We rolled on down to Singapore and asked Fingers to play that blues number again. The last word in luxury is saved for your last night, at the Ritz-Carlton in Singapore. People who measure these things say it is the second best hotel in the world. True, the decor is sometimes only just this side of grandiose, but it is contemporary rather than colonial. The only people I can think of who might complain are Singapore tourist shops, on the ground that itâ¿™s impossible to tear some Ritz Carlton guests from their fabulously kitted out bathroom, with its panoramic views over the harbour.

For a new suit, go to Chinatownâ¿™s Temple Street and ask for Prem. Thereâ¿™s a Chinese foot massage parlour where you can all shriek in a row and depart invigorated.

And at night ⿓ well, why not try karaoke? Our bar had original footage of Eric Burdon with The Animals pounding out ⿜House of the Rising Sun⿿, to sing along and improvise to. ⿜I got one foot on the platform/The other foot on the train/I⿙m going back to ⿦ England/To wear that ball and chain.⿿ And I was.

Getting there

British Airways Holidays (tel: 0870 2424 245, www.britishairways.com) and Eastern & Oriental Express (0207-905 5100, www.orientexpress.com) offer an eight-night tailor-made trip to the Far East, visiting Bangkok, the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia and a trip on board the Eastern & Oriental Express from Bangkok to Singapore. The price is £2,773 per person for departures in June, including return schedule flights, all internal flights and transfers, two nights at the five-star hotel The Oriental, Bangkok, two nights at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor, two nights full board on the Eastern & Oriental Express, and two nights at the five-star Ritz-Carlton Singapore. Train fares on the E&O start from £850 per person from Bangkok to Singapore.

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