We arrived in Bangkok from Phuket. We only had one night booked as we had to get a train at 6am the following day for Cambodia. The one night we did have though, we headed for the famous Khao San road. It’s a bustling street where all the backpackers head for. There are the usual market stalls selling all the usual t-shirts / souvenirs / fake driving licenses etc. We had a quick wander round, a bite to eat and an early night.

The journey to Cambodia consisted of a 6 hour train from Bangkok to the border; a 10 minute tuk tuk, to get us to immigration; and hour to do all the visa forms; and finally a 4 hour ride in a mini-bus to Siem Reap, our destination in Cambodia.

The train part of the journey was fine – bit of space to try and get comfy. The windows on the train open fully, so when it was warm enough, it was nice to get a breeze going through. The mini-bus part was a lot more cramped though. We were squashed into the back two seats, going along on a road which was far from smooth.

Siem Reap is the tourist town used as a base to see the ancient runins of Angkor. They make up what used to be a city built thousands of years ago. All that exists now is a collection of sites where temples / buildings used to exist. They were all in different states of repair, some very impressive. It takes a whole day to go round to visit them all on a tuk tuk we hired for the day.

After a couple of days in Siem Reap, we got on another bus (more like a coach this one), and headed for Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. As far as bus journeys go, looking back on it, there was AC, reasonably comfy seats, and enough leg room. At the time however, we both vowed that we would avoid future bus journeys at all cost! It really felt like it took forever. It took 6 hours.

We were heading to Phnom Penh as it was on route to Vietnam, where we were planning to meet up with Sabina’s mate, Nana. (We actually ended up flying back to Bangkok to meet her for the weekend instead). Anyway, once in Phnom Penh, we did a couple of tourist attractions which on this occasion were a bit morbid. The Kymer Rouge regime of Cambodia that existed in the mid 70s carried out a brutal killing spree, murdering thousands of people. We visited a jail that was used as a torture centre, and also ‘the killing fields’, which is where the many executions took place. The killing fields consisted of many depressions in the ground which is where the mass graves were. It was all a bit depressing really, and amazing that it all happened so relatively recently.

From Phnom Penh, we got some flights to meet Nana in Bangkok for the weekend. We headed back to the Khao San road where we knew of a nice little hotel that wasn’t too expensive. Coming back to Thailand felt slightly like a breath of fresh air after Cambodia, it’s just slightly less intense. We visited the Grand Palace (third time for me), and took a river trip on a long boat. We had a couple of good nights with Nana. It was nice for Sabina to have one of her mates, after putting up with spending a lot of time with mine over the last couple of months. It was a shame we could only catch up with her for a couple of days really, but she headed off to India while we had a flight to catch to Ho Chi Min City, in southern Vietnam. After a few gloomy days, we were looking forward to hitting the beach again.