At the time, I felt that Cambodia was a bit special, but it was hard to tell so early on in travelling, as I had little to compare it to. Looking back now, it has definately been the highlight so far, the place and the people absolutely blew me away.

We started in Siem Reap, to explore the Angkor temples, which surpassed any expectations I had. I'm sure there are incredible ruins all aver the world, but these must rate as some of the best. Countless huge temples, some 1000 yrs and lost to jungle, I was in my element scrambling around all the ruins and tree roots in these huge places. Watching the sunrise over Angkor Wat was incredible, seeing it appear from the black skyline, dominating the forest, with it's peaks reflected in the lake in front. If anyone gets the chance to see them, spend a good few days exploring, and definately go to Beng Melea, it's further out (2 hrs in a tuc tuc) but a lot of it has not been rebuit so you get a real feel for how it would have looked when it was abandoned and reclaimed by the jungle.

We then moved onto Shianoukville under the recommendation of a friend who was there 10 yrs ago, describing it as a huge deserted beach with a few bars and hostels. Unfortunately that's a far cry from what it is now, with all the bars building so far onto the beach, there isn't actually any beach left. We walked right to the bottom, about 2km to find an empty spot. As we weren't too impressed, we jumped on a boat out to Lazy Beach on Koh Rong, about 2 hrs away. The island was absloutely amazing. Practically uninhabited, there is one bungalow resort on the smaller beach (run by 2 guys from Streatham Hill), and it was a 20 min walk to the other side, where there was an empty 4km beach that Laura and I had to ourselves for a whole day. I thought I'd never find that in S E Asia given the amount of tourism, but this was our own huge slice of paradise for the day. A few days later we watched the sunset with a bottle of wine and I proposed. Laura said yes, happy days.

We then moved on to Phnom Peng, which as a city is not that great, but has some really humbling parts that were painful to visit, including the S-21 prison and the Killing Fields. It was one of those things that we had to see even though we knew we wouldn't enjoy it, or else we would ignore a huge part of Cambodia's recent history. I thought that going woud help me understand the motive behind the actions of the Khmer Rouge, but there just didn't seem to be any real politial purpose to the genocide, other than a major misunderstanding of Marxism.

The highlight of Cambodia, and of the trip so far, was the week we spent at the SCD orphange (www.scdcambodia.org). The orphange itself is so resourceful, it has it's own fish pond (I ate the freshest fish every day!), ducks for eggs, chickens for meat, cows to sell at market, dogs for security, and even their own water purifying works. There were 140 kids, that all really suprised me with how good their English was, their politeness, their love of life, and the way they all looked after each other. The older ones would organise the younger ones at meal times, do any work around the orphanage, and generally act as role models for the younger ones. The younger ones just wanted to play frizbee all day, or sit with us and read, and all the way through their behaviour was amazing. No sulking, tantrums, if you said no to doing something they'd just give you a cheeky grin and stop misbehaving. I wish the kids in Streatham were half as well behaved. The founders of the orphanage are really great people, we stayed up every night drinking local whiskey and 8% stout with them talking to them about Cambodia and it's history, learning some of their customs (like clinking glasses before every single mouthful) and trying random street food. We met a few of their friends, one of which was a high ranking monk, secretary to the head of the Cambodian monks. Talking to him was very daunting at first, but he was so interested in us and our opinions, we spend 2 hours talking to him about religion, multiculturalism and politics, and it was great to hear so much about Buddism from someone who has lived it their entire life.

It took a bit of effort to set up the week at the orphanage, and it was a real effort finding it (the tuc tuc driver got lost, then it got dark, his headlight broke on a really scary dust road and random locals were trying to jump in), but it was truly incredible.

There is so much more I want to do in Cambodia, and I'm pretty sure I'll be back at the orphanage within the next few years. There's more temples to explore around Angkor and Kampot, more islands to visit, places to trek in the n.east that I haven't even been near yet. In 3 weeks I fell in love with the country, and as the place I got engaged, somewhre I'll never forget.