The VIP bus was pretty good with air con and loads of stops, so the six hours went quite fast. As usual we got off the bus and were immediately surrounded by tuk-tuk drivers eager to take us to our hotel.

We had an early night after venturing to 'Pub Street', which is what you can imagine is a street full of pubs. It was not as hectic as other similar places we had been to in Asia and we are really starting to notice the lack of tourists, been off season. The only downfalls are the high humidity and afternoon showers, but the lower prices help make up for that.

The next day we were picked up at 7.30am by Phearum, our Cambodian English translator from World Vision along with his driver. We were a tad surprised to note the highly expensive World Vision Ford Ranger vehicle (in New Zealand anyway). They helped us buy a few things for Chen Chay (the 10-year-old boy we have sponsored for the last three years) and his five year old brother. We were quite excited to meet him after all this time.

We drove for a couple of hours north and were taken to the local area office in Chi Kreng (they call it communes which is basically groups of villages that are part of a district). Again, we were surprised at how big and by local standards, flash the office is.

Phearum was very eager to show us the very good work that World Vision are doing in the area and answered and explained to us in fantastic English all our questions. We then took a trip to one of the Children's Clubs in a village. Passing through the village we really got to see how Cambodians live with not very much at all. Barely a roof over their head if that. The Children's Club was a way to give primary school aged children somewhere to go. I gathered that we were taken to one of the flasher ones which is basically a room with half walls attached to a building with a concrete floor located in the centre of a small village by a river. The club operates after school and during school holidays which incidentally are taking place now. We pulled up to lots of curious looks as we were the first foreigners to go there. The staff, some who were very young were lovely and welcoming.

On our arrival, one boy fainted and I was asked to help as they didn't know what to do. He hadn't had breakfast which is very common sadly. The kids played a game so I joined in along with Josh. They were delighted and before I knew it, they were hugging me, holding my hand and stroking my painted toenails. We had a lot of fun playing games followed by us giving a speech about us and where we come from. We even sang them Pokarekare Ana (badly) and Josh attempted a haka just to get them to laugh at his crazy faces. We were treated to a traditional Cambodian dance played on their karaoke machine (they literally have them everywhere) and they told us about the work that World Vision has done over the past few years with the focus now on getting children to attend school.

We were sad to leave and were taken to a local water treatment facility funded by World Vision, which we questioned why they hadn't dug wells rather than dig a massive hole to collect rain water. The water is then filtered several times and fed into large plastic containers which can be purchased by the locals, so they have safe water to drink. They answered saying that the "water would be too dirty". Quite odd we thought. There were a few things like this we felt could have been done in a much better way.

Finally, it was time to meet Chen. We met him, along with his five-year-old brother and his maternal Aunt. As we expected they were very shy. We gave them the school bags and books and pens we had bought them along with a Chelsea (of course) football which was the biggest hit with Chen. He came out of his shell when he played games with us but wouldn't look us in the eye, let alone crack a smile. We noticed he was very thin (when we had lunch he ate like he hadn't eaten in a week) with yellow whites of his eyes and an almost haunted look. His hands were rough and calloused and he has clearly been doing manual labour. It was so sad. We will definitely raise this with World Vision. All too soon it was time to go and we stopped at a shop and bought a 50kg sack of rice to give to the family. Hopefully this doesn't get sold! Our final stop was a farm to show what vegetables they were growing. Josh suggested they might like to use wire which is readily available for their beans rather than having to buy bamboo for every crop several times a year.

After a very long day it was three days of Angkor Wat. We arranged to use the same tuk-tuk driver that had picked us up from the bus as he was a nice guy, reasonable and spoke good English. We started off at 7.00am to beat the heat and saw the Roluos Group first which was interesting but not arresting.

We then tackled the Grand Loop which was much more interesting with some quite amazing sites, one which was accessed by walking a rickety bridge over an eerie tree filled lake. Then we somehow managed to get lost and had to walk for sometime.

The next day we drove a long way to see Banteay Srey, famously carved out of pink-hued stone, the intricacy of the carvings on this temple were said to be so detailed they could only be carved by the delicate hands of women - hence the name "the Temple of Women". A last stop at Banteay Samre before calling it quits as we were templed out.

That night we went to the Cambodian Circus, Phare performers use theatre, music, dance and modern circus arts to tell uniquely Cambodian stories; historical, folk and modern. They bill themselves as Cambodian's answer to cirque du soleil. Not quite like that but they were pretty good and very entertaining.

A 4am start to see the dawn at Angkor Wat. We jostled our way to the front of the lake to await the dawn with hundreds of others. Unfortunately, Mother Nature wasn't going to comply as it was a disappointing dawn. But none the less it was a spectacular view. Angkor Wat is literally the symbol of Cambodia, and with good reason. This huge, and well preserved, complex starts with a walk over a man-made lake. No mean feat given the temple was built over 1,000 years ago! Unusually for Hindu temples, Angkor Wat is west facing and is dedicated to the god Vishnu. It really was stunning, completely covered in intricate carvings. It was mind boggling to think that the Angkor Wat is the largest religious complex in Cambodia and the largest religious monument in the world, on a site measuring 162.6 hectares. It was originally constructed as a Hindu temple of god Vishnu for the Khmer Empire, gradually transforming into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the 12th century. It was built by the Khmer King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura.

On our last night in Siem Reap we hit the town but it rained and rained so much so that our tuk-tuk into town looked like it was a boat on a river. After a few local cocktail brews (not good the next day) Josh decided to try one of the many BBQed insects. He chomped down on what we thought was a cockroache much to my disgust but it turned out to be a cricket, which was a slight relief. I was just glad he didn't want try the tarantulas. He was howvever was forced to brush his teeth like never before, by me. Apparently, it tasted like fried ginger (to disguise the taste?).

The next day it was on Air Asia back to Bangkok for the night before taking the night train down south to the islands in Thailand.