The Border Crossing
Getting into Cambodia was possibly the easiest border crossing yet, it was just a continuation of the Mekong Delta trip we were on, and so we just sailed down the river for an extra couple of hours sat on the roof of the boat, caught a bus and before we knew it we were in Phnom Penh.

Phnom Penh
The first couple of days were spent doing nothing at all, on the Sunday we didn’t get out of bed until about 3pm and we then went for our first Sunday Roast in 7 months, an average Sunday in England would be just the same for us!

On the third day in Cambodia we actually managed to do some sightseeing; we went to a shooting range to play with guns, then to the Killing Fields (Choeung Ek) and then on to S-21 (Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum) – quite a gruesome day…

Our morning started with a tuk-tuk ride to the shooting range and we were presented with a menu of assorted weaponry ranging from a simple hand gun all the way to a B40 Rocket Launcher ($200 per rocket!). Although very tempted by an early joint Christmas gift of a Rocket Launcher we decided upon the classic AK-47 with a full magazine of 25 live rounds. Jon, fairly familiar with the AK thanks to his computer was pretty good, out of the 12 hits we got I think they were mainly his, me on the other hand, not so good, probably hit the target a couple of times but I had the trickier state of automatic instead of single shot like Jon, and there is no controlling or aiming that thing when it starts firing, I had no chance! A short video of the automatic action (!) can be downloaded by following this link: http://www.r4z0r.com/AK47.wmv

After the guns came the Killing Fields, a truly horrific place where thousands of people were executed during the Khmer Rouge Regime. There isn’t much you can say without sounding like a history book other than over 19000 bodies are estimated to have been or are still buried in mass graves on the site and 9000 of the skulls found are on display.

Last on our itinerary for the day was the former S-21 Prison Camp, formerly a high school, which was basically the source of the bodies at the Killing Fields. The prisoners were held here for ‘interrogation’ first and then tortured, sometimes to death, and if they managed to survive the torture they were sent to be executed at the Killing Fields. All in all not the nicest of places, especially as it had a few rather graphic photos of those who did not survive.

The rest of our time in Phnom Penh was spent sitting in hammocks reading books and in my case, drinking a lot of earl grey!

Sihanoukville
After a few debates about going to Sihanoukville we decided we may as well given that we have a month in Cambodia and a lot of it is now off limits due to it being the wet season. It actually turned out to be absolutely fine and we saw no signs of all of the ‘constant’ crimes, plus as luck would have it, the owner of the guesthouse where we were staying needed a website so we managed to get a free room and the food and drinks bill cut in half in return!

We mainly just relaxed and read some books, trying to get ourselves as calm as possible before heading to the Angkor Temples. After many nights of drinking until 5am our sleep patterns were absolutely ruined and that took a lot of work, and sleepy days, to get sorted. We practically lived in a place called Monkey Republic and met some really fantastic people including a couple of the guys we met back on China Beach in Vietnam. To be completely honest we mainly just drank, and as they had Amaretto I was in heaven, that really is about all we did!

Apart from the sleeping and the reading we did actually make it down to the beach a couple of times during the day, which we know is extremely poor considering Sihanoukville is a beach resort and we were there for about 18 days, but in our defence we did make it to the beach every night though as that was where the other bar was, Eden!

The first beach trip was to Otres Beach which was a really beautiful stretch of sand, plus it seemed we were the only ones there except for the occasional jewellery seller! We spent the day watching jellyfish, reading, sleeping and generally having a laugh, a perfect beach day! The other times we made it down to the beach was with Rainbow House, a great place which takes care of children who are either orphans or in general need of help, so the plan was to have a fun beach day, Jon was much better at this than me partly as I still hadn’t sorted out my sleep pattern and had no energy for playing, but we all had fun I hope!

More drinking followed, and then more sleep and then finally more drinking, just what we needed and we had a great time in Sihanoukville which was due to the amazing people we met and we were really sad to leave, hopefully we’ll make it back there in a couple of months though! A special thanks to Charlie and Kimberleigh whose photos I borrowed for a few parts of this section!

Siem Reap
After a quick read through our guide we finally decided on an itinerary for the Temples of Angkor. It all began with our free sunset at Angkor Wat, unfortunately the weather had decided to pour it down with rain so we didn’t actually see the sunset but we did have the entrance to the temple all to ourselves so we can’t complain!

We spent the next three days waking up at 4.30am and seeing temples all the way through until about 7.30pm, quite long and tiring days but it was well worth it, even the rain didn’t hold us back too much. It would be too hard (and extremely long) if I described how all of the temples were so I have decided to upload lots of pictures instead and let you know that in general they were really amazing!