...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.

A relatively short drive from Siem Reap, our next stop was Phnom Penn. Cambodia's capital city was, unsurprisingly, at the centre of the last thirty years of troubles and, like much of the country that surrounds it, has very much the feel of a work in progress. Amble along boulevard that follows the path of the Mekong as it meanders its now lazy way to the sea, taking in as you go the bustle of the river front cafes, or stroll around the serene palace gardens and you are left with the impression that Phnom Penn is just another relatively affluent South East Asian town. Stray a short distance from the tourist centre, however, and you quickly discover an alternate reality. Phnom Penn to a large extent is quite run-down and in many ways a little seedy. In places it carries the air of something not altogether wholesome, and you feel, occasionally, particularly late in the evening, that trouble may be lurking not too far away.

We were in Phnom Penn for just a couple of days. We spent our first evening in the hotel watching 'The Killing Fields', a British film that tells the story of an American journalist who, during the American evacuation from Phnom Penn, was forced to abandon his Cambodian friend to an uncertain future at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. The film, it has to be said, is not great cinematography (if I am any judge) but it did provide an excellent introduction to what happened here and placed firmly in context the main purpose of our visit: to see S21 and the killing fields.

Based in the grounds and buildings of an old school, S21 was the primary detention centre of the Khmer Rouge. Over the five years of Pol Pot's tenure this place played host to some 14000 prisoners. These were predominantly Cambodians thought to be political 'enemies' of the Communist party, along with a few unfortunate foreigners. At the height of the Marxist inspired party purges, to fall under suspicion as an 'enemy' was the simplest of things. It was enough to read the wrong book, to speak the wrong word or to be a family or friend of the wrong person. Such was the depth of Pol Pot's paranoia and the extremity of his regime. And as with so many 'witch hunts' throughout history once interred an inmate faced little opportunity for redemption. Confessions were extracted under the most extreme torture and the more evidence of traitors found the more extreme the purges became. This resulted inevitably in a self-perpetuating cycle of paranoia and violence. Of all the thousands of people confined here in the short time that S21 served as a prison only SEVEN survived the experience.

Left more or less as it was found by the Vietnamese, S21 has been turned into a 'museum of the genocide' and needless to say a visit here is a sobering experience. The stark bare classrooms still house the beds onto which prisoners were chained and photographs of them as they were discovered: tortured and executed adorn the walls. Other rooms contain board upon board of photographs, each one an erstwhile inmate. Every person who passed through S21 was photographed and documented. It is bizarre to consider that against a background of insanity so extreme such meticulous records could be kept. One can wander through the impossibly cramped, roughly constructed cells, see the torture devices used and read the testimonies of both prisoners and guards.

Some buildings resonate with the events of their past. This is such a place. Strolling around the now tranquil grounds one cannot help but feel that these walls are haunted by the thousands of souls who made the one-way passage through its gates. That S21 now stands in part as memorial and in part as a reminder of the events that were played out here is perhaps the best tribute there could be to the lives that were lost.

If the horrors of S21 need underlining then a visit to the killing fields is a chilling way to achieve it. As you enter the site you are immediately confronted with a quite beautiful pagoda style memorial, built to honour the people who ended here. Once again the quiet, tranquil nature of this place belies its violent history. Closer inspection reveals multitudes of bones, teeth and other assorted remains too small to be collected that lie scattered randomly across the earth. Entry into the memorial building reveals a tower full of thousands of skulls that have been exhumed from the slightly sunken mass graves that are laid out in relatively neat, regimented rows across the site. It is believed that the remains of some 80000 people reside at this site. Most of the victims of S21, presumably amongst other inmates from other similar establishments, were brought here to be executed and unceremoneously dumped. Everywhere is the evidence of destruction: this tree used for hanging; this spot where they killed infants; the evidence of harsh and brutal execution written permanently on the remains of the victims. It is common in Cambodia to come across people who were directly touched by this madness - it was only in 1996 that the fighting finally came to an end and on more than one occasion our guides gave personal accounts of their experiences of the fighting but nowhere was there more vehemently displayed emotion than on the face of the man who guided us around the killing fields.

Credit must be given to the Cambodians for the way in which these exhibits are presented. They have somehow managed to expose the realities without diminishing or glorifying their gravity. What remains is a frank and respectful expose on the events of the civil war. Nevertheless, the genocide tour is a macabre and in many ways unpleasant experience. It quite graphically lays bear the far extent of depravity that the human race can reach when embroiled in the extremes of unchecked fanaticism (be it political or religious). It is hard to imagine that anyone could walk away from this unaffected, but by the same token everyone is affected differently. Some found it hard even to look at the exhibits; some found it inappropriate to take photographs. For myself, as a guest in this wonderful, hospitable and friendly country, I felt compelled to see, and in my own small and totally inadequate way experience some of what happened here and to learn and try to remember the lessons that the Cambodians, through these exhibits, were trying to teach us. And so, shown here, are photographs and text that some may find distasteful. I make no apology. Nor do I intend a spectacle. This is the reality. These are the lessons. Take from it what you can.

I have, as I may have mentioned, eaten a variety of new and interesting recipes during the duration of this trip. These have ranged from the moderately unusual: kangaroo and crocodile, to the downright strange: sheep's testicles, silk-worm grubs, pigs ears and chicken feet.

I like to think that I am, within reason, pretty well up for most things from a gastronomic point of view. It was with some surprise, therefore, that in Cambodia I hit a definitive limit to my culinary exploration when I was confronted with a platter piled high with garlic fried tarantula.

It doesn't really matter how you dress them up. Fry them in garlic, present them on a bed of freshly chopped green salad, drizzle them with a rich, creamy cheese and chive sauce, when all is said and done they are still bloody great, hairy, black spiders.

YUK YUK YUK!

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A few more photos...

To stand at five o'clock in the morning and watch the sun rise slowly over the five mighty towers of Angkor Wat and cast reflections in the lakes that have been cleverly placed in the gardens, is once again to stand in awe of the achievements of an ancient civilisation.

The Angkor temples date from between 802 and 1220 AD and were constructed by the Khmer kings of the time. From here they ruled over a vast domain that reached from Vietnam to China to the Bay of Bengal. The structures that remain today are what remnains of a religious, administrative and social complex of vast proportions, much of which, at least the less perminent structures, has been lost to the ravages of time.

Although the main draw to this site is Angkor Wat, this building does not stand alone. There are more than 100 separate stone temples in the area. Most notable amongst these are Bayon, which is believed to be more a city than a temple, and Ta Prohm which has been left much as it was first rediscovered by European explorers: semi-consumed by the jungle.

Whilst not matching the age of the pyramids these magnificent buildings certainly match their stature and are no less deserving of a place amongst the ranks of world wonders. There is enough here to keep the enthusiast ammused for several months, but for the rest of us it is possible to buy passes for a day or for three days. A day is definitely not enough and the three day pass is highly recommended. This allows enough time to find the best locations for sunrise and sunset and to explore some of the other temple complexes.

Angkor Wat itself was built during the early years of the 12th century by Suryavaram II to honour the Hindhu god Vishnu and is a symbolic representation of Hindu cosmology. It consists of a central temple representing Mt Meru and five inter-nested rectangular walls and moats that represent chains of mountains and cosmic oceans. Entering is a huge relief, not least because it provides welcome respite from the attentions of over-zealous juvenile hawkers who prowl the outer car-parks and prey on unsuspecting tourists. Passing through the main gate of the outer wall takes you down a long stone walkway to the entrance of the temple proper. Here, if you have a head for heights, you can scale the steep stair-way of the central edifice for incredible views across the temple grounds in all directions. This also gives you the opportunity to explore the beautifully carved interior of the temple. If climbing up the steps is a major undertaking, descending is even more so and unless you have nerves of steel it is recommended to join the long queue for the opportunity to descend the one stairway that has a guide rope.

Angkor Wat is a stunning example of Hindu temple architecture. Similar in appearance to Khajuraho in India the attention to detail exhibited in the construction of the buildings, the thousands of carvings that adorn the walls, the symmetry, the choice of location and the occasional random bullet hole from the days of Khmer Rouge combine to make this an engagingly beautiful and poignant place. It exists on a scale that beggars belief and is difficult to convey, dwarfing anything that India has to offer. It is, in fact, the largest religious structure known to exist. There is no doubt that a visit here leaves you agog at the audacity of its creators.

And yet, it is Ta Prohm and the other temples that have not been completely reclaimed from the jungle that leave the most indelible impression. Here you gain a real feel for what the French naturalist Henri Mouhot must have felt when in the 1850's he stumbled upon these wonders.

Simply amazing!

In order to reach Cambodia we had to cross Northern Thailand. Here the impossibly picturesque mountains of Laos give way to a flat landscape which, if you ignore the padi-fields, would not be out of place in the Netherlands. This set the scene for the next two weeks in Cambodia.

We crossed the border into Cambodia at the ramshackle border town of Poipet. Whilst the flat padi-field landscape here remained mostly indistinguishable from Thailand the tarmacced and brick built infrastructure of the former quite suddenly gave way to mud, pot-holes and an obvious feeling of poverty. Once again it was abundantly clear that we had changed countries.

Our first stop in Cambodia was Siem Reap. After the drive from Poipet entering Siem Reap was a bit of a surprise. This is the home of the much vaunted Angkor Wat and as such represents something of a paradox in Cambodian terms. The drive into the town takes you along a seemingly endless row of top class hotels and restaurants that have the glitzy, vaguely artificial facade of a millionaires row in some nameless American city. These rows of wannabe palaces have sprung up in answer to a burgeoning demand for accommodation for the rafts of tourists that fly in directly from Bangkok for a quick tour of 'The Wat' a couple of beers in the 'Irish bar' and an equally rapid departure often without seeing anything more of Cambodia. Angkor Wat is, without a doubt, Cambodia's star attraction and so this is, I guess, inevitable but to my mind it represents a tragedy of almost biblical proportions. Whilst there is no doubt that Angkor is quite remarkable the rest of Cambodia offers no less of a rich experience.

Passing through the glitz you soon realise that millionaires row is very much a veneer beyond which lies the real Siem Reap. A host of small, quaint and slightly dilapidated hostels combine with lean-to restaurants and market stalls to give the place the familiar buzz of a SE East Asian town that I have come to love. We had three days here. It was going to be fun.

And so to Vientiane. The capital of Laos, and sadly our last stop in this country as we were unable to get a permit to take the truck into the south. This is a pleasant town, small for a capital city and sporting, as a result, a delightfully sleepy atmosphere. There is not much to see or do here but compensation is delivered in the form of a river-front 'esplanade' with multitudes of outstanding BBQ restaurants serving all manner of sea-food, local delicacies and beer.

We spent a very pleasant couple of days here, eating, drinking, making merry and enjoying the stunningly cheap massage possibilities. An hour of full-body, very accomplished massage being a steal at three dollars (US), a bargain in anyone's language (that is to say any western language). Sadly, as I was to later realise, this represented the pinnacle of Asian massage and a sudden end to my recently started quest. Nowhere did I find one better. If I had known at the time I would have had another.

So, duly stuffed with exemplary prawns and thoroughly relaxed courtesy of the skilled hands of local messieurs we departed after not enough time for the Thai border and a hell-for-leather drive for our next destination.

Cambodia here we come.

Just off the end of Route 13 lies Vangviang. This is back-packer heaven with a plethora outdoor activities on offer to amuse and abuse. Rather than stay in the town, which is tacky beyond belief, we found an indescribably picturesque but intensely hot and humid rough camp just on the outskirts with en-suite swimming pool - of the muddy, fast-flowing variety - and integral karst monolith. Amazing. A quick slither down the adjacent bank ended in a plunge into the river and welcome surcease from the brain-frying heat of the Lao mid-afternoon. This day was by far the worst we had encountered in that respect since India.

The next day we had enough time to 'play' and so went into Vangviang to see what potential there was on offer for suicide. Laos, in common with many of the countries we have been through, could not really be considered a litiginous society. They, instead, take the view that if you die doing something you decided to do yourself then well it is kinda your own fault. Radical huh? Coming from a cotton-wool society this is something of a refreshing take on things, encouraging one, as it does, take responsibility for one's own destiny. And so, risks duly weighed and, well, pretty much disregarded, off we set for a morning of fun, frivolity and caving.

It didn't take long to realise that this was no day-trip to Cheddar Gorge. The walk into the caves took us along the edges of padi-fields and through jungle for around 15 minutes during which time we were given a definitive practical demonstration of exactly why they call this the 'wet season'. Thoroughly soaked in a way that is only possible through complete immersion in a tropical rain-forest or, shall we say for example, the sea, we arrived at the cave mouth. Here we were issued with head-torches, an unusual design in that they required activation by twisting two bits of bare wire together, and led resolutely into the first of two caves. This was the 'dry cave', which in relative terms I suppose it was. Large, carpeted in thick sticky mud and bedecked with some of the more impressive stalagmites/tites I have seen, this was used as a hide-out for local people during the Vietnam war. In this particular chapter of the Indo-China saga Laos was intensely bombed by the Americans who were engaged in the oxymoronic (or maybe just moronic) practice of 'armed reconnaissance'. This was largely because parts of the Ho Chi Minh trail extended across the border from Vietnam. In fact, the Americans allegedly dropped, on average, one bomb every 8 minutes on this country for the better part of the 9 year duration of the war bestowing on Laos the dubious accolade of: most intensely bombed nation ever in the history of modern, and therefore probably all, warfare. Not bad for a country that was to all intents and purposes neutral.

It is difficult to appreciate, 40 odd years on, what it must have been like during that time, especially for those of us who have never seen conflict in any measure. Certainly there remains no outward evidence of the raveges of war. It is also easy, on another level, to snigger good-heartedly about the astonishing range of the SE Asian diet. Standing in a small huddle in this dank cave, our torches extinguished to give us a full appreciation of the total absence of light and realising that people lived here, in these conditions, under an almost constant barrage of high explosives, starved to the extent that they were ready to eat cats, dogs and even spiders just to survive very effectively takes the hilarity out of the situation, however.

Having said that we saw one of the spiders in question and, let me tell you, there was meat enough there for a full three course meal with optional doggy bag. Yeech!

To visit the second cave we were again given the standard issue torch, complimented on this occasion by a truck inner tube. They were not joking when they said this one was 'wet', involving as it did entry mounted on said inner tube through a small hole no more than 10 inches off the surface of the river. Tubing 100 odd metres into a flooded cave with no more than 3ft of clearance to the roof and an exit not much bigger than my hand-span is a great experience. It is also, perhaps, one of the stupidest things I have ever done give that it was raining heavily just outside. I can still see the headlines. All's well that ends well, however, and we celebrated with an hour or so of far less dangerous traipse swinging into the river from a stupidly high platform followed by a very welcome and slightly more relaxing iced late in one of the local cafe's before jumping once again aboard our trusty steed and heading for Vientiane.

The next stop in Laos was Louang Prabang. A pleasant little town on the Mekong with almost nothing going for it beyond a pleasant ambiance, some Buddhist caves, a very nice night market and the odd bar or two. We spent a relaxing couple of days here, nevertheless, enjoying, coincidentally, the pleasant ambiance, a boat trip to the Buddhist caves, an evening trawl around the arts in crafts on sale at the night market. We also found time for an impromptu and very drunken karaoke evening which was a lot of fun. Despite there being not much to do here it was a very enjoyable visit and I was sorry to leave. This, as much because the prospect of getting back on the truck and of rough camping was wearing a little thin as Louang Prabang holding us in any particular thrall. Get back on the truck we did, however.

Normally this part of this trip is spent on boat drifting slowly down the Mekong. Whilst this might sound idyllic, it is, we were reliably informed, not too kind on the old derriere, and so there had been a concerted campaign to remove this from the programme and replace it with a drive down Route 13. Route 13 has only recently become accessible to tour companies as the FCO has had a red flag on it. Apparently a few years back a couple of backpackers were killed here by bandits. However, the red flag has now been lifted and so we were allowed to make this part of the journey by road. This was something of a relief at least to those of us whose derrieres had been thoroughly abused by riding in the back of a truck for what was now approaching six months.

Making this part of the trip by road was quite a coup as it turns out. Route 13 traverses some of the most beautiful scenery that we saw in SE Asia. Let me tell you, that is no small accolade; it has some stiff competition. This drive put us smack in the middle of Laos' karst landscape. Once an ancient coral reef many times the length of the Gt. Barrier reef, this is part of a continuous strip of limestone land-forms that stretch from the south of China all the way into Thailand. It is these rock formations that are responsible for the 'classic' Thai beach scenes that are so familiar from films and postcards. In Laos, rather than projecting from the sea these startling monoliths rise abruptly and to incredible heights straight out of the padi-fields and tropical forest. It really is quite spectacular. Otherwise, Route 13 passed uneventfully. There was a slight nervous moment when a guy in a t-shirt and shorts wandered nonchalantly in front of the truck carrying a semi-automatic rifle, but we were assured that he was part of the local militia installed to provide safe transit for vehicles on this route. The bandits are now mostly elsewhere. Phew!

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