...And a headlong rush it was. Thundering along the rutted, pot-hole riddled stretch of mud-saturated clear-cut that passes for a road in these parts, we watched with a strange sense of de-ja-vous the last remnants of Cambodia pass us by in a blur of thatched, stilted huts, padi-fields and threatening thunderheads as we retraced our steps to the Thai border. It didn't take long to reach the border but here our race for Bangkok came to a sudden and unyielding halt.

It was the coup; everyone knew it was the coup; even the pigeons (har har!). That was why we were standing here being mercilessly hammered by the torrential monsoon rain in a static queue that was apparently setting out to match the longevity of Angkor itself. And so we stood, helplessly watching the inexorable blinking of the seconds on our collective watches as they slowly counted away our chances of making it to Bangkok whilst at the same time, as if on some macabre seesaw, they raised the ugly possibility of yet another sweaty, wet night in a tent.

Administrators the world over are the same. They wield their small slice of power like a beacon of light in their small, dark, twisted personal universes and feed off the frustration and despair they create. As ever we stood at the mercy of the small-minded. There was nothing we could do except collectively will them to let us through. To process those passports just that little bit faster. 'I am not a revolutionary anarchist planning to overthrow your government and hell, even if I was, I just missed the party. I just want a comfortable night in a hotel. Honest. Let me in. Pleeeease.'

Eventually, after what seemed like half an eternity the queue started moving, accompanied by not inconsiderable relief from the denizens of the Exodus truck, and we began once again to inch slowly towards Thailand. I don't really remember the journey from the border. It passed in a mercifully uneventful blur of flat, blandish scenery, rain swept skies and terminated in the bright lights and traffic queues of Bangkok. I do remember the rush of excitement as we edged our way through the chaotic traffic and marvelled at the neon signs and brightly lit skyscrapers of what was probably the most modern and busy city we had seen since leaving Beijing weeks before. This was it; 28 weeks of truck-bound bone-crunching, bruised arses and wind-burned faces was over; we had reached our goal. We cruised slowly down Nana Plaza past the pubs, pool halls and go-go bars towards the Crown Hotel slap in the middle of Bangkok's renowned red light district listening to the cat-calls from the uniformly stunning Thai girls out to make a quick buck in time honoured fashion. The reality of climbing down the aluminium steps of the truck for the final time hit with a potent mix of melancholy and relief. I thought, as I sank into the comfortable bed in my shabby but adequate hotel room and glanced at my profile in the full-length bedside mirror that today served only to remind me how unerotically thin and dirty I had become. ‘No more camping for me for a while; YES!’

Leaving Phnom Penn, we headed for a comfortable hotel and a couple of days chilling on the beach at Sihanoukville. Warm seas, white sandy beaches, laid-back, hippy-style, beach-front bars and a rag-tag bunch of super-friendly locals selling massages, sarongs and a range of local hand-crafts; a real nice way to chill out at the end of the trip. We spent two pleasant, relaxing days here before retracing our steps to the Thai border. Our last night in Cambodia was spent on the floor of a schoolroom in a Buddhist monastery. We intended to camp, but the rainy season really let us have it and no one really wanted to spend what would have been a very wet night in a tent. The following day we awoke to the sound of Buddhist chanting and prayer drums; a wholly pleasant way to greet the day if it hadn't started at three in the morning. I don't mind rising early, but jeesh...

Nevertheless, greet the day we did and prepare ourselves for the Thai border, we weren't sure how this was going to go because it was the day after the coup, and a headlong rush for Bangkok. We had, we felt, done enough camping and voted as a group to ditch the final night in tents in favour of a Bangkok hotel: a good decision given the weather.

Phnom Penn offers a few other somewhat less harrowing attractions. It is easy to lose a morning in the Russian market where, amongst the normal array of often bizarre food-stuffs and you can find an assortment of souvenirs, rip off designer clothing, rip-off CDs and DVDs, rip-off books, rip-off jewelry, rip-off watches and rip-off electronics along with a mountain of useless tat. In short, if you can't find it here it ain't worth having and in many cases if you can find it here it ain't worth having either. Otherwise, there are various other markets and monuments, the palace and the national museum many of which warrent a visit. After the gravity of the previous day, however, it was time, we felt, to throw culture to the wind and find some gratuitous entertainment instead. So it was that four of us bundled into a tuk-tuk and found ourselves speeding through the traffic chaos of Phnom Penn en-route to the firing range.

I still can't help feeling that promoting and glorifying the existence of guns in a country so recently wracked by war is at least a little irresponsible. On the other hand these kind of activities provide at least one more way for a desperatelypoor country like Cambodia to extract relatively large sums of cash from relatively rich tourists. As with most things there are pros and cons and well, where else in the world does an average Joe like you or me get to fire a tank?

Well ok, I didn't fire a tank, but for a mere $2000, if I had that kind of money to throw around, I could have done. Instead, on arrival, I was confronted by an impressive array of hand-held weaponry including hand-guns, semi-automatic rifles, fully autonatic machine-guns and the odd rocket launcher or two. To be honest I can't even claim to know what most of these were; I have only seen the like in the hands of such venerable people as Rambo, Bruce and good ol' Arnie. Before you have the chance to really take in what is in front of you a price list is thrust into your hand and you have the opportunity to select which elements of this private armoury you would like to sample. Consceous of the cost I chose the relatively cheap options of an AK47 and some kind of large-bore hand-gun, the name of which I forget. With practiced efficiency I was summarily frog marched to the range, a pair of industrial ear defenders clapped onto my head, a 10 second instructional demonstration of the 'point it that way and pull that' variety was delivered and suddently I was confronted with a sight, a distant target and the prospect of trying to relate the former to the latter in some meaningful way.

Ok, lets be honest here, it ain't big and it ain't clever, but squeezing the trigger of a semi-automatic rifle set to automatic and feeling the rapid thud as bullets spray down the range hitting just about anything but what you are aiming at is ONE HELL OF A RUSH. I have never done it before. I will probably never do it again. But I have ticked yet another box on the long list of things to do before I die.

A few laps of the track on the go-carts and I returned to the hotel with my adrenaline addiction thoroughly satisfied, at least for a while. Better than a stuffy old museum, any day.

The genocide tour takes a mere morning, although it feels like much longer, and by lunch time we were once again sitting in one of the pleasant cafes on the sunny and slightly humid shores of the Mekong drinking iced coffee and lunching on french-style baguettes. Conversation naturally gravitated to the experiences of the morning as if everyone felt a need to rationalise and somehow file this experience away under something that to us made some sense. A fruitless task if ever there was one and inevitably such experiences end up in the big file entitled 'don't quite know what to think - deal with later'. Nevertheless, the normality of our own lives reasserted itself and it was pleasant to while away the rest of the afternoon appreciating the more appealing andfamiliar side of Phnom Penn, a few drinks, some nice food and perhaps a massage or two.

If you feel like learning more about the recent history of Cambodia, however, there are a couple of bars on the river front that show documentary films about subject such as the rise of the Khmer rouge, the life of Pol Pot and the programme of land-mine clearance which remains a huge current concern in Cambodia. I have heard various figures bandied around and it is not clear which one is correct, but
there are apparently still 10's of injuries and deaths a month as a result of land-mines. Certainly there are a higher proportion of maimed or incomplete people on the streets of Phnom Penn than anywhere else I have visited on this trip. Sobering thoughts once again.