We took off on our long drive to Siem Reap and the roads deteriorated very quickly. I felt like I was back in Bolivia.Our teeth rattled and our arses went numb. We stopped a few times along the way, including one stop where a bunch of kids descended on us to sell stuff and a young guy put a tarantula on my head, nice. Some of the girls freaked out, still, it was a cool photo.

Siem Reap is home to the temples of Angkor and the most famous in this grouping Angkor Wat. The city and temple complex is vast, covering 40 miles around Siem Reap. Built between the 8th and 13th century as a place of worship and as a capital city (Angkor means capital). It is Indiana Jones-esque and no amount of footage and pictures prepares you for your first glimpse of Angkor Wat, just incredible. We visited for sunrise at 6am and sat in deckchairs in the small lake that sits in front of the temples and drank coffee. Our tour leader Kevin from Intrepid Travel, who is from Cambodia and a former full time Angkor tour guide, doubled as our local guide and provided an excellent understanding of the place.

Over two and a half days we toured different parts from the city complex to the outer temples, all in there own way fascinating. We saw the jungle temple, where the film Tomb Raider is filmed and is so old that giant trees have grown out of the walls, it looks like a theme park, we took in the pyramid Baphuon temple and the Preah Khan temple, which famous for its impressive stone carvings. Despite the excessive heat we remained mesmerized by what we were seeing. Every time we pulled up at a new one we had to run the gauntlet of women and children running to the bus doors to sell us everything from musical instruments to books to t-shirts. It is quite fun really as they provide a lot of good humored banter.

Close to the Angkor temples is the Cambodian Land Mine Museum, which was another eye opener. Having seen so many victims on this trip so far it was good to get a further insight. Some 6 million landmines still litter Cambodia and around 200 people still die a year, three times that are maimed. It is a major issue across this part of the world and because there is no maps of where they were planted anyone that works off a beaten trap could become a victim, it is quite frightening.

We really enjoyed Siem Reap, a bustling town that has excellent markets, restaurants and bars, including the Angkor What? bar where we had a particularly crazy session (literally) drinking buckets of spirits and bumping into a girl who was on a tour with us in South America. The pictures speak for themself. The town is a far cry from the dusty ugliness of Phnom Penh, although the history of that city still makes it one of the most fascinating places we have taken in on this journey.

It is back to Bangkok now where we say goodbye to our small tour group before we then travel down to the south of Thailand for two weeks of diving and chilling on a beach before we get back to Blighty. The only issue is we have to travel 3rd class on the overnight train without A/C, despite booking it 5 weeks ago there was no 1st or 2nd class tickets left as it is Thai New Year on 14-16 April, so one and all are traveling. It will be an experience.