ello and welcome to our penultimate blog from overseas. Lee and I are back once again in good old Bangkok, and for us it feels like a bit of a home coming. After an amazing but slightly draining week in Cambodia, we have returned to Bangkok to indulge ourselves in some Western style luxuries, i.e the food, shops and ease of everything and also to prepare ourselves for our final leg of our travels to China and then back to good old Blighty.

Lee, Christi and I spent a fun 3 days together generally shopping until we dropped at a few of the charming little markets in and around HCMC, and checking out some of the many bars and restaurants on the strip near our hotel and even a dodgy club the other side of town. We also wanted to get a bit of culture and history in whilst we were there and so decided to head for the War Remnants Museum first. Knowing that most of the exhibits would be pretty harrowing, we figured we could cheer ourselves up a bit after with some retail therapy and a drink or 2. The museum houses a very large collection of copies of some of the most gruesome and startling images taken during the Vietnam/American war. Also on display are some very disturbing pictures of some of the poor children who have been born since the war ended who have been afflicted by malformations due to the effects of Agent Orange from which their parents were affected by during and since the war. Needless to say we did all leave there feeling quite humbled by what we saw so without further ado we all jumped into a cyclo and headed towards the market to start our mammoth souvenir purchasing.

The next day we all headed out on a day trip to The Cu Chi Tunnels and also to a very interesting religious temple for a minority religion that is particularly popular in that area of Vietnam, called Cao Dai and the Temple that we visited is called The Holy See. Caodaism is a syncretistic religion which combines elements from many of the world's main religions, including Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, as well as Geniism, an indigenous religion of Viet Nam. The religion started in the province of Tay Ninh in South West Vietnam and was brought to my attention from a book I had previously read about Kim Phuc, the young girl made famous for the image taken of her during the war where she (and her family) are running away from a fire in the background, horrifically burned from a napalm attack. In the book written by her she tells in graphic detail how her and family's life was very much centered around the Cao Dai Holy See and so I was very eager to see the place she mentioned so much. We arrived at midday, just in time to witness 1 of the 4 a day services of worship that are performed every six hours at 6am, 12pm, 6pm and then 12am. The temple is very different to any other temple or religious house of worship we had seen anywhere. It bears a resemblance to the shape of a large church or Cathedral from the outside, but is very colourfully decorated with the main image along the sides of the walls and at the altar inside, is a giant eye. The whole service was a very colourful and melodic ceremony, with its followers wearing different coloured gowns depending on their status.

The tunnels of Cu Chi are an immense network of connecting underground tunnels located in the Cu Chi district of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam, and are part of a much larger network of tunnels that underlie much of the country. The Cu Chi tunnels were the location of several military campaigns during the Vietnam/American War, and were the Viet Cong's base of operations for the Tet Offensive in 1968. The tunnels were used by Viet Cong guerrillas as hiding spots during combat, as well as serving as communication and supply routes, hospitals, food and weapon caches and living quarters for numerous guerrilla fighters. For the Viet Cong, life in the tunnels was difficult. Air, food and water were scarce and the tunnels were infested with ants, poisonous centipedes, spiders and mosquitoes. Most of the time, guerrillas would spend the day in the tunnels working or resting and come out only at night to scavenge for supplies, tend their crops or engage the enemy in battle. Sometimes, during periods of heavy bombing or American troop movement, they would be forced to remain underground for many days at a time. Sickness was rampant among the people living in the tunnels; especially malaria, which accounted for the second largest cause of death next to battle wounds. Our guided tour around the area also included being shown a demonstration of some of the horrific traps that were made to capture the American soldiers and cause extreme pain and disfigurement. We also saw some of the incredibly tiny tunnel openings in which the Viet Cong used to enter and exit the tunnel system. When the guide lifted the grassy 'lid', we all gasped at how impossibly tiny it looked and thought there was no way anyone could have slid up and down into it, but sure enough a typically lean Vietnamese man demonstrated how he could slide straight down it and pop back out again. We were all given the chance to try it out ourselves but there was no way I was going to risk getting completely wedged into the small crevice and having to have the fire brigade come out to pull me free. There was a chance later to have a short walk, well crawl really, into some of the other tunnels. Christi and I crept along nervously in the pitch black for about the first 25 metres and opted to come back up at the earliest point, but Lee bravely struggled on for another 150 metres or so. He said that the tunnels got even narrower after Christi and I left and he had to actually crawl along on his hands and knees in the pitch black. It was so intensely hot and humid down there that mixed with the complete darkness and narrowness made it every claustrophobic's complete nightmare.

We all went our separate ways on the Monday morning, Christi heading for the airport to take her back to Phuket, Thailand, and Lee and I heading to a travel agency round the corner from our hotel to catch a bus that would be taking us on our 3 day, 2 night trip along the Mekong Delta to the border of Cambodia, and from thereon to the capital, Phnomh Penh. When we all surfaced that Monday morning, we were pretty surprised to discover that the thunder storm that had started earlier that morning, was now in full swing, and was throwing the most unbelievable amounts of water down from the sky. The main road outside the front of our hotel had literally turned into a river, and it wasn't long before Lee and I with backpacks adorned were wading out into the almost knee high water to make our way to the travel agents. We had heard about the monsoon rains and flood potential in SE Asia but this was the first real time we had witnessed some of the effects of its intensity. Amazingly though, within about 30 minutes, the rains had started to ease quite a lot and most of the high level water had drained away just leaving a mass of surface water.

Our coach eventually turned up after being caught out in the floods and the morning rush hour, but we were soon on board and making our way along Highway 1 towards the Mekong Delta. After a few hours on the road driving past flooded fields and stretches of highway we finally arrived at the quayside where we caught the first of the boats that would form part of our long journey along the Mekong towards the Vietnam/Cambodia border at a town called Chau Doc. We spent a short while looking around a floating market where we saw demonstrations on how some of the local people make coconut candies, rice paper and snake wine amongst other things. The snake wine is actually made using a real snake and there were also a couple of scorpions and a dead bird in the bottle thrown in for good measure. Apparently a shot of this rancid poison is good for curing the aching backs of the people who work in the fields all day, bent double! After some lunch and a very brief bike ride back to the boat, Lee and I boarded the 2nd of the boats that formed part of our journey towards Cambodia. After 30 minutes or so chugging along the Mekong on a quaint but comfortable narrow boat, we arrived at another quayside where a minibus met us to take us across town to another dockside to meet the 3rd boat of our journey. We met up with more people here who were also going to be doing the same journey as us from that point into Cambodia. As we boarded the sooted looking speed boat I had a feeling that this part of the journey was not going to go as planned somehow. Not 5 minutes into the journey and the black clouds opened up and it started pouring really hard. This wouldn't have been a problem if our boat had the hatch door at the front directly by where Lee and I were sitting, but incidentally it didn't have one and so the rain came pouring in giving us a good soaking. I quickly retrieved my rain mac and pulled all the toggles so that only my nose and mouth were left exposed to the elements and smirked at how ironic it was to be so wet sitting inside a boat. Thankfully the rain eased after 15 minutes or so, so I was able to remove my sauna jacket and go back to relaxing and taking in the interesting sights along the Mekong. It was only a few minutes later and the driver slowed the boat right down and 1 of the other guys jumped to the back of the boat to lift the cover over the engine. We all had to cover our ears as the noise of the engine was absolutely deafening with the lid up. It wasn't much quieter with the lid back down come to mention it. We weren't sure what the guy was doing at this stage but he wasn't at the back for too long and when he jumped back in through the hatch, the driver started the engine again and off we went. It wasn't until this procedure had happened about 7 times that we all started to figure out something was quite amiss with our boat. When the driver pulled the boat over towards the riverbank and 2 of the boat guys got out to inspect the engine we realized that the problem seemed to be that there was a leaking fuel problem, only this time we had completely run out of fuel. We all sat there grumbling about what a joke it was that they were still using such a crap boat and why they hadn't thought to carry some spare fuel in a jerry can etc knowing there was such a problem. Anyhow, 45 minutes or so later, 1 of the men came back with some fuel and we were on our way again, only by now the sun was starting to set and we were over an hour behind schedule. I guess it was inevitable that we would be traveling the rest of this part of the journey in the dark, but I think we all thought that the boat must have lights to guide us and to make us visible to other boats coming along the river. How stupid of us to have thought of such an idea. As the dusk turned to pitch black, I started getting a bit panicky that we were now traveling along the river at speed with no lights. We were going along like this for about an hour when all of a sudden a massive great big barge came speeding along side us, probably no more than about a foot from us - its driver not having seen us until the last minute, and our driver clearly not having seen him approaching us, and certainly not hearing it coming over the horrendous noise our boats engine was making. A quick flash of the bright warning lamp from the barge was all that we all saw in that instant that caused us all to gasp and the driver of our boat to swerve off to the left to get out of its path. Predictably a few seconds later our boat then hit something, causing a loud bang and us to all jolt forwards and then the engine cutting out completely. Predictably everyone started shouting their annoyance to the driver and other guys on the boat and they in turn realized how they may have a mutiny on their hands, and so a quick call on their mobile and some rescue boats were being sent out for us. Ironically we were only about 5 minutes away from where we were supposed to be stopping at anyway, and just to add to the irony of the whole situation, our accommodation that night was on a floating hotel! Exhausted after the long day's excitement, we grabbed some quick dinner and headed off to bed as we had an early start the next morning. The last leg of our journey was another boat ride although thankfully this was without incident, and so we arrived safe and sound into Phnom Penh at lunch time the next day.

Lee and I decided to hit Cambodia running so to speak, as sadly our traveling time seems to be coming to an abrupt end, and we wanted to fit in as much as we could in as short space of time as possible. After we checked into our hotel we headed off in a Cambodian tuk-tuk, much better than the Thai version it has to be said, and headed to the infamous S21 Tuol Seng Prison. The site is a former high school which was used as the notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge regime from its rise to power in 1975 to its fall in 1979. Tuol Sleng in Khmer means "Hill of the Poisonous Trees". Formerly the Tuol Svay Prey High School, the five buildings of the complex were converted in August 1975, four months after the Khmer Rouge won the civil war, into a prison and interrogation center. The Khmer Rouge renamed the complex "Security Prison 21" (S-21) and construction began to adapt the prison to the inmates: the buildings were enclosed in electrified barbed wire, the classrooms converted into tiny prison and torture chambers, and all windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire to prevent escapes. From 1975 to 1979, an estimated 17,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng (some estimates suggest a number as high as 20,000, though the real number is unknown). At any one time, the prison held between 1,000-1,500 prisoners. They were repeatedly tortured and coerced into naming family members and close associates, who were in turn arrested, tortured and killed. In the early months of S-21's existence, most of the victims were from the previous Lon Nol regime and included soldiers, government officials, as well as academics, doctors, teachers, students, factory workers, monks, engineers, etc. Later, the party leadership's paranoia turned on its own ranks and purges throughout the country saw thousands of party activists and their families brought to Tuol Sleng and murdered. Like The War Remnants Museum in HCMC, Vietnam, S21 Museum also houses hundreds of pictures of some of the poor souls who lost their lives their or were held captive and tortured until being transported to the infamous 'killing fields'. The pictures are both depressing and haunting but what I found even more disturbing was some of the numerous pictures painted by an ex-prisoner of images from his memory. Also on display were some of the actual contraptions used for the tortures, and within the classrooms, the all but bare except for the bed with shackles and toilet pots that were used to detain, and finally the place of death for the 15 inmates that died inside the prison. Very disturbing indeed was the fact that there are still traces of blood spattered up the walls and on the floors of some of the cells. The 15 people, 14 men and 1 woman that died at S21, and were consequently discovered in a severely decomposed state by the Vietnamese Soldiers, have been buried within the school/museum grounds. As for the remaining thousands of people who passed through S21, most of them were taken to Choeung Ek mass burial site (killing field just outside Phnom Penh). Lee and I paid a bit extra for a local guide to show us around the museum and at the end she asked us if we had any questions. Amongst other questions, I asked her if the stories and history of that dreaded era is now taught to Cambodian children in schools but she said that it wasn't and basically indicated that it is still a subject that is rarely spoken about. Lee and I knew it was always going to be a very sobering place to visit, but we wanted to get a better understanding of what and how it all happened at a time when Lee was just a toddler and I was not even born. It was also important to us so we could understand some of the impact it has since had on Cambodian history and culture today.

The next day we visited the Choeung Ek 'killing field' site just on the outskirts of Phnom Penh City. The site is located right next to a school and we could hear the children playing and having fun in the playground and we both said how hard it was to imagine that something so utterly terrible could happen at such a place. The sun was shining and the sky above was gorgeous blue but you just can't help but feel choked as you walk around the fairly small site and see the very understated signs that mark some of the mass graves. The central monument which houses some of the many skulls that were recovered seemed a fitting tribute to those who suffered so terribly and were killed in such cold blood.

Later that day, we took a tuk-tuk ride around the city to get a general overview of the place. It was also our first encounter with trying some Khmer style cuisine. We found a nice looking restaurant that had an interesting looking menu and also suggested buying and trying a few of the dishes. We opted for a fish Amok, the most famous of the Khmer dishes, and also a Khmer curry and a noodle dish. I was absolutely blown away after the first mouthful and it wasn't long before Lee's enthusiasm had caught up with mine. It has to be said that both the Amok and the Curry dish share very similar flavours to Thai curry's, but they are not nearly as fiery hot. We were so glad that we tried these dishes early on into our Cambodia trip as we ordered more Khmer food dishes every other day we were in Cambodia. It is now officially my new favourite foreign food and I will be on the look out for some Khmer restaurants once we're back in the UK.

From Phnom Penh, it was all about Cambodia's most famous tourist attractions - TEMPLES, ok mainly Angkor Wat around Siem Reap and also some of the other vast numbers of ancient temple ruins. Lee had done a bit of reading in our guide book about some temple ruins that were located on the outskirts of another town on the way to Siem Reap that were said to be great to go and explore on your own (well with a local guide but not on an organized bus tour) as they are off the usual tourist trail and you are pretty much guaranteed to be able to walk around the ruins and not see another tourist. We booked our coach ticket to take us to the town where we would then arrange transport and a local guide to take us to the ruins at Sambor Preikuk. We had been on the bus for a good couple of hours when Lee suddenly announced that we had accidentally booked our coach tickets for the wrong destination. We needed to go to a town called Kampong Thom but had hastily and stupidly booked tickets for a bus to Kampong Cham. On realizing our mistake we started to wonder if we would still be able to rectify the situation and get ourselves over to where we should have gone to, and still have time to explore the place within our time frame. Thankfully as soon as we got off the bus we were able to get in a tuk-tuk who whizzed us across town to another bus station where we straight away picked up the correct bus, and were then once again on the correct path to where we needed to be going. As it turned out, by the time we arrived in Kampong Thom it was late afternoon and we wouldn't have had time to have gone out to Sambor Preikuk that day, so instead we got talking to some local guides and arranged for 2 of them to meet us early the next morning and take us on the backs of their motorbikes to the site, where we would then meet up with a local guide who could give us all the information on the various ruins. We met our guide early the next morning who showed us around the site for a couple of hours and giving us some information on the ruins we were seeing. It was certainly true that it was a site that you are unlikely to run into other tourists in - the only people we saw was a crowd of kids tailing us for our tour, trying desperately to sell us some of their silk scarves each time our guide stopped talking. We decided to reward the faithful group of 4 young girls who had been on our heels the whole time at the end of the tour, but all of a sudden another 20 or so children all turned up thrusting their scarves and other wares in our faces, all equally desperate for us to buy their goods for "only 1 dollar'. We had to decline them of course but the look of sadness in their eyes was pitiful and it does leave you feeling a bit guilty that you can't help them all. They all ask why you won't buy their goods seeing as you just brought from the other kids. Sadly this was a situation we got used to in Cambodia.

After our trip to Sambor Preikuk in the Kampong Thom Province, Lee and I were back on board another bus, this time headed for Siem Reap, the place to base yourself for the ultimate temple - Angkor Wat. After a particularly scary bus ride, we arrived in Siem Reap in the afternoon. We headed out and grabbed another sumptuous Khmer style lunch and then booked our 2 day guided tour to the temples around Angkor, starting very early the next morning so we could watch the sun rise over the famous main temple. We arrived at Angkor Wat at about 5.30am the next morning and got ourselves a good spot just in front of the big pond at the front of Angkor Wat Temple. We were lucky that it was a lovely clear morning, but I think Lee and I were a bit disappointed that it wasn't a really spectacular sunrise - oh well, you can't control the weather I suppose. Our guide suggested that we start off by seeing Angkor Wat first as the vast majority of tourists and groups go to see some of the other temples in the morning and then head back to Angkor in the afternoon. Thai, our guide, gave us endless amounts of really interesting information from the moment we got into the taxi and we were really pleased that we opted to pay for a guide.

I'm not going to go into detail about all the various temples and ruins we saw as I think the pictures we'll be adding to our blog speak for themselves, but to summarize, there really is only 1 word to describe these temples - amazing!! Everything from the detailed architecture, to the mythological statues and inscriptions, to the how well some of the them have been preserved is just incredible. Even the temples that have been taken over by nature are just as awe inspiring. Some of the temples/ruins that we visited were the ones that featured in Tomb Raider and when you see them you can absolutely see why - they really look like something straight out of an Indiana Jones movie set. We spent a tiresome 8 and a half hours looking around the temples on the first day, and so by the second day, Lee and I were starting to get a bit less enthusiastic about them. You can only go on being wowed for so long before it can start to feel a bit same same. By the end of the second day we were feeling completely 'templed out', and it is for this reason also that I still haven't quite got the will to talk at length about all the different temples.

Lee and I spent our last day in Cambodia checking out Siem Reap. We hired a tuk-tuk to take us on a little trip around the streets and back streets just to see the main area's and to see a couple of the neighbourhood's on the outskirts of the city. It was nice just to relax and get our heads back together after our mammoth temple sessions, and just enjoy Siem Reap for the lovely town that it is. We thought it had a real holiday resort feeling about it - I guess that's because of the row of restaurants, bars shops and markets, but it does also have a charming area of old colonial buildings. We decided to eat in a themed restaurant on our last night there. The restaurant served our (well my) new favourite Khmer style food, and hosts a show where the entertainers are dressed as the ancient Apsara (dancing) girls and dance along to the traditional Khmer style music being played by a group of men. After visiting the temples the few days before hand, it was nice to see the mock re-creation Apsara's doing some of the traditional style dancing as it was an element of the Angkor Empire that featured so heavily in everyday day life. Statues and sculptures are adorned all over all of the temples as we were told by our guide that they were highly revered entertainers, especially for the various Kings of the Angkor era, and so it seemed fitting to see for ourselves what it might have been like back.

It seems that our temple visits had quite an influence on Lee and I, as we treated ourselves to our largest souvenir of the whole trip so far - a rather large wooden Ganesh (Hindu) statue. When we arrived in Bangkok a couple of days ago, Lee and I had to say goodbye to him and our other (pretty large) collection of souvenirs we have collected since we have been in South East Asia. It seems everything about this part of the world has had a pretty lasting impact on us somehow and we now have an ever growing collection of goods to prove this. We are keeping our fingers crossed that Ganesh and our box of other bits and bobs makes it home safely - they're not exactly things we can just pop out to Ikea and buy another of.

So, the rest of the journey.... Tomorrow Lee and I fly to Hong Kong where we will spend 24 hours on our own, then we meet up with the group who are also doing the same China trip with us. From then-on, its a case of travelling to the various places on our itinerary making our way overland to Beijing, and then fly home from there. We think it's unlikely that we'll be able to get another blog tapped out from China, so our final blog on the final chapter of our year's world travels will probably be written from the exotic counties of Essex or Suffolk.

Thank you for reading our blogs and keeping up with our amazing journey and look forwards so much to catching up with you all very soon. Til then......