Phnom Penh is a surprisingly nice and atmospheric city....yes its dirty, smelly and hot... but the people here have been lovely and we've enjoyed our stay (though the large rat in the kitchen where we are staying was a shock). Kim has desperately been trying to track down the Cambodian delicacies of deep fried tarantulas and roasted crickets but to no avail...though Mark did almost tread on a crab who had escaped from its basket and was making a desperate bid for freedom from the market.

The guest house we are staying in has a great bar downstairs run by an Aussie called Glen... beers magically appear as you walk through the bar and get topped up before you've even finished your pint! We went out for dinner on our first night with Glen and a random New Zealander who was propping up the bar. The restaurant (Bada Bing) was run by a Brit and served us cottage pie, chips and gravy follwed by apple pie and blueberry ice-cream - bliss!!!

We hired a lovely tuk tuk driver (Samta) to take us round the sights. He took us to meet his wife and son (Samta jnr) at his home which was a great privilege and then we visited the Royal Palace, the National Museum, the Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. These places were incredibly sad and moving and it is hard to believe we are in a country that only 30 years ago lost one quarter of its population through mass executions, torture, starvation, disease and hard labour to the Khmer Rouge regime. What really brought it home to us was when our driver casually mentioned that his Mum and two brothers had died during this time! What can you say to that???

Rather a lot of beers have been consumed at Tony's Bar since then and we have met up a couple of times with Kate for dinner and drinks (who we met in Livingstone, Bangkok and Siem Reap). We attempted a bar crawl on our last night which was a really good laugh but try as we might we could not find a bar that i) had more than one person in or ii) was not a gay bar or iii) was not teeming with ladies on sale (!). Kate and Kim quite enjoyed the gay bar 'Blue Chilli' but Mark was disturbed that he had his bottom pinched and we were forced to move on! We are sadly unlikely to bump into Kate again - she flies to Oz this week. She leaves us with her Lonely Planet book - so we again have the 'bible' to guide us!