Cambodian portions are big. Food-wise they're also hellish tasty, but emotionally, you get a big dollop of very contrasting feelings.

Don't worry, I'm not planning on going all soppy - the Singaporean otter was as close as you're getting to that - but despite a very welcome return on the warmth and genuine nature missing in Thailand and yet more amazing sights, so many things in Cambodia are tinged with sadness.

Our guest house in Siem Reap near Angkor Wat was glorious - Claire's handy work with the camera around the pool will tell you that and I could go on about the bend-over-backwards helpfulness of every single person working there. Happy happy. But then you learn it's the owner's project to help uneducated Cambodians; he's one of only 2 out of 13 family members who survived the Khmer Rouge's genocide. After escaping as a refugee to NZ, he's returned to try and help young people to learn English and give them an opportunity denied to so many.

Heart strings suitably pulled, they then fix you up with a guide for the temples who hits you with an even sadder tale. The youngest of 8 boys, he wasnt allowed to go to primary school until he was 10 where his parents needed him to farm. This is understandable where marriage in Cambodia involves the groom's parents paying the bride's parents for her hand. He was lucky; his family could afford to marry off the first sibling, but brother number two meant they had to sell the cow. Brother number three saw the buffalo depart and number four meant some of their land had to go too. So paying for secondary school was out of the question, which is why he ran away with his Mum's help to become a monk, just to have a shot at learning. Without his father's blessing though, he returned to tend the fields every night before grabbing two hours sleep and carrying on with his studies. At the risk of sounding implausible, he's now broken off his studies to work as a guide to pay for his brother's hospital treatment (unfortunately he recently died of HIV in any case) but is hoping to complete his English training so he can return to his village and set up a school for the kids. Seriously you can't, and nor would you want to, make this stuff up.

And that's before you visit the killing fields or S21, the Pol Pot regime's torture prison in Phnom Penh. We only took one photo in either location; the Stupa (tower) you see in the corressponding photo album - it's fifteen metres high and full of the skulls of the vicitms they found in mass graves.

In need of cheering up after that, the Angkor Temples are excellent remedy and a reminder of better times for the Khmer people - their empire based there once encompassed most of Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. Set against and intermingled with the beautiful scenery, the temples (there's hundreds of them) are stunning. We spent 2 very very hot days trotting round them and still only scratched the surface. I'll leave the rest ot Claire's handy work.

Other than that, we sped through the country and onto Vietnam. Felt a touch guilty when we broke out vow of celibacy from western food in the capital where the balcony of the Foreign Corresspondents Club overlooking the Mekong during happy hour on Singapore Slings and beer got the better of us and the heat, but the overridding sense was of wellness. That was helped by free accomodation too - a mix up in room allocation led to the Lonely Planet paying for us to be upgraded, and there was me just gunning for a free guidebook.

And so we jumped on a bus, furnished like a distasteful stately home complete with match valance over the curtains, and complementary face masks (don't seem to have got bird flu just yet, but hey) and headed for Vietnam. More on that next time.