Our journey from Vientiane in Laos to Siem Reap in Cambodia saw us travel by taxi, an international rail service, an overnight sleeper train, a flight and a tuk tuk. Laos has around three kilometres of railway from the station at Thanaleng, around 13km from the centre of Vientiane to the mid-point of the Friendship Bridge that links Laos with Thailand across the Mekong River. Flags and signs proudly mark the border as the train trundles across what is, except for when the four trains a day cross the bridge, a road crossing. The journey to Nong Khai, Thailand takes around ten minutes and more time is spent queuing to get your passport stamped at the Thai passport control than travelling on the train. We can however say that we have traversed all of the current Laos rail network!

Siem Reap is a tourist hot spot because just 7 kilometres away are the ruins of the ancient Khmer temples and palaces, the most famous being Angkor Wat. Getting around is easy, for just US$15 you can hire a tuk tuk and driver for the day to take you on either the 'short tour' or the 'long tour' that will, over a couple of days, enable you to see over a dozen of the most important temples and historic sites in this area. You could cycle if you wished but the heat is oppressive and the breeze when travelling between temples on an open tuk tuk is a welcome relief.

Angkor Wat is seriously impressive, but also busy with throngs of people wandering, looking, listening to tour guides or scrambling over parts of the temple. The temple covers an area of about 1.5km by 1.5km, there are lots of steps - mostly uneven - and after a couple of hours you will likely have seen enough and need a break as you get whisked to the next temple or historic site. The other temples are also impressive, but none are in as complete a state as Angkor Wat. Ta Prohm, for example, has trees growing out of, or indeed through, the temple walls and has purposely been left in this state so is well worth seeing - you could save the airfare and watch Tomb Raider as some of the scenes were filmed at this location.

We broke our two days up with a day in the city and the Angkor National Museum. Two hours in the national museum provided huge amounts of information about the building of the temples and the Khmer kings that built them as well as their religious significance.

After two days of temple viewing we were 'templed out'. Individually each temple would be worthy of a visit and they are built on such a scale that if it was an English Heritage castle you would probably be impressed, but with so many to see, in such a relatively compact area, one temple does start to look a little like the next.

Siem Reap itself has all the trappings of a tourist town and caters for high end travellers with big five star chain hotels through to backpacker accommodation. Our hotel, right amongst the action and close to the popular Pub Street area, cost us £30 a night (www.khmermansion.com) and was much better than our expectations. Restaurants in town also cater for all from the Hard Rock Cafe, to local Khmer food, Indian, Mexican, French or Germanic and also suit every pocket, but for around US$5 you should get a pretty decent meal.

Without any real planning our time here also enabled a catch up with an old work colleague who is travelling around the world, over a period of around sixteen months, without flying. It was good to have a beer and a meal with Dan and if you want to follow his travels visit http://noflytripping.wordpress.com/

So we leave Siem Reap today and head to the capital city, Phnom Penh, via a short flight with Cambodia Angkor Airlines . . . . more propeller driven action later!