What follows is a draft of an "After word" to the next edition of Cambodian Interlude. (The publisher, by the way, has promised that the next edition will have proper pictures and that he will call the book by its original title, Cambodia and the Year of UNTAC.)

When I left Cambodia in August of 1993, I was a 40-year-old United Nations Volunteer who had just spent 18 months in a country that was, as far as I could tell, still at war. After I left Cambodia, the war ended with the gradual collapse of the Khmer Rouge, but Cambodia’s other problems were just beginning. With peace and a new government, whose election I was partially responsible for, the “legal government” cut down enough trees to permanently alter the country’s climate; the population exploded; and the government was, everyone believed, corrupt. Recently millions of dollars have turned up in bank accounts in Singapore and people keep getting murdered for trying to challenge the corruption. The most popular actress in Cambodia was even murdered, everyone thinks, by the Prime Minister's wife! The First Lady helped engineer the killing of Piseth Pilika after she realized that her husband was having an affair with her. Everyone I met when I returned to Cambodia in November of 2002 was filled with despair. How could there ever be any hope, they told me —elections were coming up, but the government would rig them.

But some things, as far as I could tell, have gotten better. At least now the fancier restaurants are filled with Cambodians instead of United Nations officials. And now there are hundreds of more restaurants—the Cambodian middle class is again alive and well. Indeed, four of the five old Cambodian friends I met now have cars, cell phones, and what we in the West call “disposable income.” None of them dreamed ten years ago that they would ever have such riches.

The country had changed so much that I hadn’t recognized a thing. To begin with, the airport has been totally re-modeled. Now it is world-class and air-conditioned. (When I left Cambodia in '93 the airport official had literally dragged my backpack to the plane—and in the process put a large hole in it!) On the way into town I didn't see one of the once-familiar ox-carts or pony-carts. But I saw a lot of sports utility vehicles, new cars, and motorcycles on roads that were now decently paved and lined with shade trees, and buildings that looked well maintained. Driving into town, one would hardly guess that this was still one of poorest countries in the world.

Unbelievable (to anyone who was in Cambodia during the United Nations 3-billion dollar election in 1993) but true, there are now about ten traffic lights in Phnom Penh and, just as incredibly, the people stop at them.

Nevertheless, off the main roads, the side streets are still, on the whole, pot-holed messes filled with bicycles, motorcycles, cars, pedicabs, and the occasional pedestrian. These days at night you no longer see hordes of people sleeping along the main streets, although the city is still crowded and still poor. One night as an old friend was driving me home she pointed out the street lights that now line some of the main streets. "See," she said, "aren't they beautiful?"

On all the streets, there is still a huge over-supply of motorcycle taxi drivers. In Bangkok, where I’ve lived for the last three years, the