We arrived in Sihanoukville, Cambodia on 19th June and stayed there until 27th June. There wasn't a lot to do there but we needed some time to rest from all the traveling. We could have gone to the beach but it rained most days so we avoided that. One thing I noticed though was people seemed a lot friendlier here - they smiled, they seemed to want us there and they said things like "have a nice day". It was such a contrast to the miserable faces in the rest of Southeast Asia.

We left Sihanoukville on 27th and had a reasonable journey to Phnom Penh. The next day Ross and I went to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (s21) and Choeung Ek (the Killing Fields), The Genocide Museum is an old school which was turned into a prison in 1976 by the Khmer Rouge. Over 20,000 victims went there to be tortured into confessing to crimes they didn't commit over less than 4 years. Anyone who wasn't a peasant farmer was accused of crimes against the state, forced to confess their own family members as complicit and then executed. The place was full of cell rooms and rooms with beds on which people were tortured. It was very gloomy. After that we took a tuk tuk to the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek. The prisoners of S21 were brought there after their confessions, and killed. Over 150 pits and 9000 bodies have been discovered so far and a massive memorial Stupa stands there containing the skulls and bones of the victims. One thing that particularly stood out to me was the fact that Britain, US, and especially Sweden all continued to see the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia, even after they were driven out of leadership in 1979. When details of the genocide started emerging, the west rubbished the claims and even allowed the Khmer Rouge a seat on the UN in the early 1990's. It took until 2009 to get a joint Cambodia-UN court set up to try the remaining leaders of the Khmer Rouge who had survived until that time.

Having lost the Brexit vote, and seen our travel funds evaporate, we decided we had to cut back on all further travel adventures in South East Asia except a birthday outing to Angkor Wat on July 1st. So we spent the remainder of our time in Phnom Penh resting and then took a bus up to Siem Reap, the final destination in Asia.

On July 1st, we got up very early in the morning (4.30am) to get a tuk tuk to Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is a temple in the ancient capital city of Angkor. It would have been an amazing city in its heyday. We arrived in time to watch the sun come up over Angkor Wat temple albeit the time of year meant the sun didn't rise directly behind it. After witnessing the sun rise, we explored the main temple itself. We were even lucky enough to see some monkeys who lived there. After touring the temple, we headed to our second site - Ta Phrom, the temple used in the tomb raider movie. This had not been restored much and with the trees growing out of the walls it truly looked like something from a forgotten world. It was my favourite temple and I felt a lot like Indiana Jones as I explored it. After that we went to a further temple which I climbed to the top of, and then to the old city (Angkor Thom) itself which included interesting buildings such as the Terrace of the Lepers and the Terrace of the Elephants, as well as other temples and towers to climb up. We finished by visiting Bayon, the other highlight of the day. This temple was covered in carved faces and looked so beautiful. While there were many other temples we could have seen, we were shattered and hungry so we returned home at lunchtime. We spent the final few days resting and then caught our flight out to Singapore and then Darwin, on 5th July.