Phnom Penh is a compact city, just as friendly as Siem Reap, but with a slightly more international feel about it.

The Royal Palace, whilst not as grand as the one in Bangkok, is grand enough for most mortals. It’s not every day you get to walk on a solid silver floor comprising more than 5000 tiles each weighing 1kg……that makes about 5 tonnes of gleaming sliver. Sadly, a lot of the palace is unavailable for photography so memories have to come away in our heads.

Most of you will remember the pictures on TV of the brutal regime of Pol Pot in the mid/late ‘70’s. Some of you, including our children, probably will not. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 and immediately changed the course of Cambodian history. He was a communist revolutionary who believed in an agrarian regime. He convinced the people that the USA, still involved in neighbouring Vietnam, were about to bomb Phnom Penh. The pictures we saw of the capital city where we are staying, empty, really are quite eerie. Within 3 days he had turned Phnom Penh into a ghost town with everyone forced to march to the fields to begin 3 years, 8 months and 20 days of hard labour, brutality, torture and murder. During his reign, Pol Pot murdered around 2-3 million people, starting with intellectuals, foreigners, people with glasses and basically anyone else he felt like, including his own men towards the end. He wanted only peasants who he considered pure and who were least likely to question him. The final numbers will never be known but it represented between 20-25% of the population.

We visited The Tuol Sleng Museum in central Phnom Penh, just a 20 minute walk from our hotel. As you can see from the picture it used to be a school but Pol Pot turned it into a prison. It was called S-21, where innocent men, women, children and even babies were tortured using the same abhorrent techniques used by despots over the centuries. The prison contains pictures of many of them, the children looking frightened, women looking as though they weren’t sure what was happening and men resigned to their gruesome fate. We took only one photo, of the outside, and found the taking of detailed pictures by others nothing less than macabre.

We also visited The Killing Fields at Choeung Ek about 15 km outside Phnom Penh. This was where the inmates were brought after torture in Tuol Sleng to be given release from further suffering by brutal murder and a final resting place in a mass grave. Almost 20,000 men, women, children and babies were discovered here at the end of Pol Pot’s reign. The Memorial Stupa, which we pictured from a respectful distance, contains around 8000 skulls, bones and clothes protected by panes of glass and acts as a strong reminder of the brutality that went on. Once again, we only we could only look in amazement at the people taking close ups of the skulls of once proud Cambodians who will remain “unknown” for the rest of time.

We’’ve said before how much we like Cambodia and its people so we will be back to spend our tourist dollar in a country that so badly needs it. Some people scramble through life on as little as 2USD a day – that would buy you half of a very basic sandwich from Tesco!

Tomorrow we leave for Vietnam.

The friendliness of the Cambodians continues to delight us; even the hawkers aren’’t pushy and also give a little friendly banter. A total contrast to the hawkers on the beaches of Goa; Rottweiler’s when they smell fresh meat. Chatting about it we remembered that even the immigration officials at the airport had a “good morning’, a smile and time to explain how the visa system worked. Most of you would agree that the term “immigration official” and the word “smile” just don’t go together, especially those of you that have visited the USA.

On Wednesday we saw the sunrise over the big boy, Angkor Wat, followed by a number of other smaller temples. By smaller we mean standard or average as anything compared to Angkor is small. We didn’t find it the most interesting compared to some of the others but its condition after around 900 years is quite astounding. It’s size? Well, sorry boys, quite clearly 900 years ago size really did matter!! It’s absolutely humongous which, sadly, the pics don’t do justice. Believe us, or better still, come and take a look yourself.

Thursday we just chilled in Siem Reap, catching up on the blog, emails etc and took some pictures of some of the other inhabitants of our guesthouse, about a hundred crocs! The family who own the guesthouse also farm crocs in a large pool at the rear. As you can see from the pics some of them are pretty large. We didn’t get near enough to measure them but the biggest ones must be over 4m…….big enough to handle Cheryl in one gulp! It was a pity that we missed feeding time. They get fed twice a month and on the day they got fed we were out templing.

Friday, last day of templing, and we started at 8am to take the 90 minute ride to Kbal Spean. It’s a 1.5km hike through the forest up a fairly steep and difficult track. The end result was worth it as there is a carved river bed, The River of a Thousand Lingas, where you find carvings of Vishnu, Shiva and other Hindu deities. To come in the wet season would be a tragedy as most of them would be covered by the rushing water.

Following our walk back down the hill we visited Banteay Srei where the carvings were just so intricate and well preserved it looked like they had been done yesterday. This was a much smaller temple than most but what it lacked in size it really made up for in the complexity and condition of the stonework.

Neil writes: The vastness of Angkor Wat, the number of temples to visit in such a relatively small area plus the intricate and extent of the stonework makes Siem Reap a “must see before you die”. However, on the down side for me was that most of the temples follow a similar pattern of design and appear to me to be as much “ego trips” of the King at the time, as temples of worship. However, climbing to Kbal Spean this morning to visit the very atmospheric waterfalls and to see the carvings in the riverbed epitomised for me what is a true spiritual place of worship. No ego trips here, just a beautiful place to worship with some wonderful carvings in the water to express your commitment to your beliefs……wonderful and only around 1000 years old!

Finally, on our return trip we stopped at the Cambodia Landmine Museum which is also a rehab centre for victims. The founder, who did his stint as a child soldier (aged 5 to 13) with The Khmer Rouge laying some landmines before “seeing the light”, continues to this day to spend his life deactivating them. Around 4-6 million landmines dotted the Cambodian countryside and to this day men, women and children continue to die or be maimed by these horrors of war. A sobering end to our visit to Siem Reap and which also explains the number of amputees selling things in and around the town and the temples.

We finished the day with a trip to a Cambodian Beer Garden with Sambo for more draft beers and shouts of “Jol moi” or cheers when the glasses were raised. Back for dinner at the guesthouse, and were were delighted to find that Sony, who runs the place, had taken our advice to start selling simple cocktails. He had bought a range of spirits & mixers and we were invited to become temporary bar staff to make the first Gin & Tonics ever served at The Golden Mango.

Our flight back to Asia took us back to Kuala Lumpur for an overnight stop at the Tune Hotel in the airport before flying out to Siem Reap early next morning. Good job it was only one night as the room was pretty compact, we found it hard to find space for our two bags, each now weighing a paltry 10kgs (not bad for a six month trip don’t you think??!!).. However, it must have been a problem for the guys who checked in after us! The family had two very large suitcases big enough for a small child to fit in, plus they also had the small child. The child could have slept in the case if they could have found space to put it in the room in the first place.

Anyway, we’re now in Siem Reap which is the home of Angkor , a World heritage Site, consisting of Angkor Wat, the biggest religious building in the world plus over a 100 other temples & relics. The central site alone covers 25 sq km, and in its heyday, boasted a population of around 1m people at the time when London was a mere pimple at approx 50,000! So, you can imagine how much history exists here as the temples start from around 800 AD to go on until 1400 AD. The most recent note of interest is that Ta Prohm was used as the setting to film Angelina Jolie playing Lara Croft in Tomb Raider.

So far, our first impressions of Cambodia are very positive. The people seem genuinely friendly, easy going and relaxed. It’s hard to believe considering their recent history – Americans bombing the hell out of the country, including using the repulsive Agent Orange in the early 70’s, the butchering regime of the Khymer Rouge and the subsequent civil wars that continued until the 90’s. Siem Reap is a charming place with none of the grabbing nature that we found last year in Luang Prabang in Laos.

Talking of Luang Prabang, what a small world this is we live in. The day we arrived, at around 9am, we were about to check in when we heard voices from the breakfast area calling us and asking if we remembered them. Simply amazing, it was Betty and Graham from Nova Scotia in Canada who had the room next to ours in L P last March! Graham is 75 this year, has a beaming smile and a tendency to get into all sorts of scrapes (much to the annoyance of Betty). They both have an adventurous spirit and show absolutely no signs of slowing down. Here’s us talking so positively about them when they told us about how inspired they were with us when talking to their friends when they returned home to Canada! They were so impressed with us travelling for such long periods that they have now extended their trip this year to almost 3 months.

A 3 day ticket to the Heritage Site, used over 7 days, cost 40USD and our first day was amazing, the sites provide one ‘wow’ moment after another. It was also physically tiring as a number of monuments require clambering across ruins and scrambling up near vertical steps.

The pics just cannot capture the incredible atmosphere or the sounds of this place. We have our own tuk-tuk driver, Sambo, who for 12 USD/day takes us around the Temples and waits patiently while we play at being Indiana Jones and Lara Croft. He also supplies us with gallons of ice cold water, information on the various temples that we visit and he likes to drink draft beer with us. The day was finished off with sunset on the hilltop temple of Phnom Bakheng followed by dinner at the guesthouse. Who turned up to serve Neil a beer? Sambo!

Tomorrow we take on the big one, Angkor Wat, the world’s largest religious building, surrounded by a moat, (that makes our own English Castles look like they’re protected by a dripping tap), that is almost 200m wide and a mere 6.5km long…….wow! We’re also going to be up at 5am to watch the sunrise which is supposed to be an awesome experience….can’’t wait.