It was my grand idea to get up at 5.30am to see the sunrise, the internet said it was due to put in an appearance at 6.05am. Glyn came with me and we headed to a small pier within the hotel grounds. It was already quite light but the sun needed to climb mountains ahead of us before he could shower us with his death rays. It was nice to be up at that time; when all is quiet except all the insects, frogs and birds that never shut up. If ever you've watched a film set in the jungle and think that they are overdoing the background noise, they are not; if anything the sound guys will have turned it down so that you can hear the dialogue. At breakfast I had my first ever ... read more

Another first for me today as I got to use a squat loo on a ferry! I've experienced one on an overnight train in China before and let me tell you, that was not fresh. But a squat loo on a ferry was marginally better in that there were only cubicle doors between myself and the deck overlooking the sea, so even if I had forgotten to bring my own toilet paper, it would have been OK because I would have been blown dry by the sea air. This was not the highlight of my day, but it will always be a story for parties. The morning started in Battambang, where Helen overheard another tourist on the phone, telling someone that his trip to stay in the jungle for two days had been cancelled due to ... read more

We decided four and a half hours sleep was more than enough, so we rose at 4.30am to head off to Angkor Wat in time to see the sunrise. The Japanese speaking guides tell our guide, Nin, that he's dropped on by learning English instead of Japanese because Japanese tourists insist on this every day of their stay. The English are satisfied with just the one sunrise. Nin had been up even later than us because the leader of the opposition party was due to fly in to the local airport at 10.15pm, and over a thousand Cambodians were there to support him. Despite being labelled a democracy, Cambodia is incredibly corrupt, far more so than democratic democracies. During the last election, there was a power cut during the count for 20 minutes and, lo and ... read more

The one armed man, former Khmer Rouge (although he was introduced as a Suryavarman supporter who had defected), was a lot more welcoming than he was in during the 90's. Back then, he'd greeted Sokum's tourist bus with guns and a rocket launcher, Sukum had to run out with his hands up shouting "Don't shoot! Don't shoot! I have a bus of 30 tourists and it won't be good to shoot foreign nationals!" Sokum was laughing so hard as he recalled this to us, equally so was the one armed man. People move on I guess, especially when you consider that the Khmer Rouge killed 16 of Sokum's family. I didn't quite get how the arm was lost, but it was through conflict, the guy was miming all sorts of stuff and I think he also ... read more

I felt bad for the guys who took us to the boat. Our transportation was three wheeler push bikes with and one small Vietnamese man peddling, aided only with one gear to help him. Add to that that they were not only carrying a larger tourist on the back, but their luggage also. But worse for my guy, he not only had me, but EE and her luggage too! I guess they know what they're doing and Glyn's bike guy was relaxed enough to make a phonecall as he pedalled across a busy junction. It was a small junction afterall, not big enough to warrant taking any notice of the traffic lights, which were on red. The areas of Vietnam that we've seen have been very flat, so the the incline over this junction was barely ... read more