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Sihanoukville is a town down in the South of Cambodia, about 4 hours by bus.

The buses deserve a quick mention. The drivers are literally constantly on the horn. Every person they pass is given several loud blasts of the horn. In between the horn you have to suffer the blaring Khmer Karaoke that emits from the TVs, that most of the tone deaf locals enjoy droning along to. If it's not the music then they have weird pantomimes playing on the TV where they all the characters have Hitler moustaches. All very bizarre, but seem to be hilarious to the locals who piss themselves laughing every couple of minutes.

Sihanoukville itself is a bit of a dump, however a short moto ride away is Serendipity beach which was where we were headed. We hadn't used any motos up til this point, but we couldn't see any tuk tuks so just had to go for it. Motos are just guys on motorbikes whose bikes you jump on the back of to get lifted around he place. Not particularly exciting, although pretty dangerous considering we had our massive rucksacks with us. We took one each and they balanced the bags on their fronts and we hopped on the back with our daysacks. Was a bit concerned that we weren't offered helmets, but they were wearing them. Especially as hardly any of the moto drivers wear helmets. We made it to our destination unscathed though, so it was all good.

Serendipity beach wasn't much to look at as beaches go. Very dirty both on the beach and in the water. Was pretty cool at night though, as all the restaurants that the beach backs onto put big comfy wicker seats an low tables on the sand right in front of the sea, and at night you couldn't really make out the plastic bags and chip boxes floating on the surface of the sea.

It was a pretty lively place, which might have had something to do with the fact that the cheapest beer in Cambodia can be found here, as it is brewed in Sihanoukville. 50 cents a glass of draught, which was well received.

There were quite a number of children patroling the beach at night selling various things, and lots of people missing arms and legs crawling along the sand begging for money. There was more begging here than we've experienced anywhere we've been in South East Asia. Literally every couple of minutes from the moment you sit down. Quite difficult to deal with. Lots of the children had sticks that were filled with fireworks that they set off every night on the beach. This was a bit disconcerting given children that could barely walk semed to be allowed to have them. There were also a few twats firing them at each other and waving them about right next to where we were eating that wasn't funny.

We managed to find a better beach without as much litter and free from rivers of vile smelling rivers connecting the restaurants to the sea. It was much quieter. We spent a few days chilling there, before taking a boat to Bamboo Island an hour off the coast.

This was much more secluded, and we stayed the night in a very basic A-frame bungalow right on the beach. Was really tranquil, and there were cows and chickens roaming about the place and on the beach. There was one big bull that clearly wasn't to be messed with. We watched as a little 5 year old local got a bit too close and was met with a full butt to the face. Apparently it had split his nose open, and there was a bit of comotion as the locals all gathered round to see if he was ok. We were a bit further away, and it was quite funny from our vantage point, because the bull just stood staring at them as if asking 'does anyone else want a go?' It was punished by having a rock thrown at it. Think the boy was ok. Didn't get much sleep on the island as there was no fan in our room. Aboslutely baking hot. I got up in the middle of the night for a pee in the sea, and was greeted by loads of tiny twinkling white lights flashing in the water. They were amazing. Like little underwater fireflies. Thought I'd maybe overdosed a little too much on the cheap beer and was seeing things but Jenny said they were some kind of shrimp. They were pretty cool though.

We returned to the mainland and spent another couple of days dossing about before returning to Phnom Penh for a night, rising the next day to catch a bus to Saigon. We took a trip to the central market on our free afternoon in the Cambodian capital. It had all the usual stuff, and some very unusual stuff. There were women sitting selling all sorts of insects to eat. Big insects.....and spiders.

Tarantulas are a delicacy in Cambodia. I took a few pictures of them, and was asked for a dollar, so I told her just to give me one. She gave us one and a big cricket for good measure. We took them back to the hotel to try. We each ate a leg of the tarantula.

It was pretty manky. It had quite a lot of hair on it. Having been the big man and bought the thing at the market, I wasn't quite so brave about it when it was out of the bag. It was a bit big for my liking even dead. We both ate quite a bit of the cricket, but it wasn't great either. Thy both just tasty really salty, crunchy and a bit like they'd been kicked about the floor a bit. Try everything once though.

The next day we got up and headed for the bus station an travelled the 6 hours over the border to Saigon - officially called Ho Chi Minh although nobody here actually calls it that. The border crossing between Cambodia was remarkably smoothe as it was all taken out of our hands by the posh bus company that we went with. It was also quicker as we had already purchased our Visa in Cambodia which is a requirement of entry to Vietnam.

From Siem Reap we took a bus South 4 hours to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. We stopped off for a bite to eat in a tiny little place where Jenny had her best opportunity yet to prove that her pre-trip boasts of wanting to eat crickets and insects, weren't just hot air.

But once again she bottled out by developing a mystery stomach ache at the crucial moment. When we arrived in Phnom Penh there were about a million tuk tuk drivers ready to pounce as soon as we got off the bus, in fact one drove along side the bus before it had even stopped and Jenny agreed through sign language to go with him. We ended up with him as our tour guide for the various sights of interest around the city the next day. We met up with him the next morning and were taken about half an hour out of town to the shooting range. This was an extremely bizarre experience. We drove down a little track off the main road and turned into a completely unmarked drive where a gate was opened and shut very quickly behind us. We were ushered to a table in what was a bit like a little cafe. We were gawking at all the various guns adorning the far wall when the guy who seemed to run the place brought us over a menu each with lists of various prices for various different weapons that we could have a go at. He recommended the AK-47 Kalashnikov for me with 25 bullet magazine, and for Jenny an M16 semi automatic with 15 bullet magazine. There were various other weapons from handguns to tommy guns you could choose from. You could also shoot a bazuka at the mountain, or throw a hand grenade into a duck pond. These were all a bit out of our price range however. So we went with our hosts recommendations and donned camouflage jackets then were taken into a long darkened room with a seat at one end and a target about 50 yards away at the other end. Jenny was sat in the seat first, the guy loaded it up, then the gun was put in front of her, and off she went.

Same drill for both of us. He let us have a few goes on semi-automatic, then flicked a switch to automatic for the second half. Was pretty exhilerating, especially as mine jammed twice, which was a bit disconcerting. When he flicked it to automatic it was really kicking back into the shoulder. It was also mental how many bullets came out and how fast they did with one squeeze of the trigger.

All good fun. Expensive fun though, $30 each for the 5 minutes that we spent there.

After the shooting range we went to see the killing fields at Choeung Ek, on the outskirts of the city.

This place was really depressing. The area was used to execute and dispose of Cambodians in mass graves during the Khmer Rouge's regime from 1975-79. Very very sobering. Felt very guilty about firing the weapon just before going there. There's not a lot to see, however the history of the place and the huge gaping holes in the ground where mass graves have been disinterred, make it a pretty thought provoking site. At the peak of the Khmer Rouge's ethnic cleansing process, they were executing 100 people a day at the site. One of the graves had 450 bodies found in it.

There is a stupa - memorial - to those who died which is a tower that contains some of their clothes and several hundred skulls. I think all in all 14,000 bodies were discovered at the site, many of them women and children. All very chilling.

It only got more horrifying when we went to visit the prison at Tuol Seng in the centre of the city. This place is probably the creepyiest place I've ever been.

It's an old school that was transformed into a prison where thousands of Cambodians were brought to be interrogated and tortured by the Khmer Rouge, before eventually being driven to the killing fields to be executed.

The classrooms had all been transformed into various types of prison cell and they have room after room of black and white photos of those who ended up in the prison.

The sheer number is astonishing. There were also many women with very young children in some of the photos. They have also preserved some of the torture devices including amongst other things a box that housed various scorpions, venemous spiders and centipedes that was put on the victims'heads. There are also various extremely disturbing photos of people who have been tortured to death thrown in for good measure. Whilst the list of Pol Pot's security regulations are a window into how paranoid and ridiculous the Khmer Rouge was.

The place is just sickening. But it is a testament to one of the most barbarous genocides in recent history, so I don't suppose that's very surprising. We both left feeling pretty shellshocked by what we'd seen.

We spent a couple of days recovering and dossing about Phnom Penh. It's not a very nice city so far as places to see, however there is so much going on, that it was great to just sit and watch locals going through their everyday lives, markets etc.

The number of children begging and selling books is a bit depressing, and you can't go 5 minutes sitting in a restaurant without being mobbed by them. We got chatting to one of the booksellers who had amazingly good English. He looked about 12 but said he was 16. He told us that he sold the books to pay for school, and that he got to keep any money that he made from it. He said that it cost $7 a month to go to school. So we bought a couple of books off him. Unfortunately he borrowed a book off one of his less friendly colleagues who found this out and came and pestered us to buy his books, which ended in him threatening to kill me......which was nice. Turns out the books are pretty crap. I've got half way through my one only to find that there are about 25 pages missing. Bit annoying.

The food in Cambodia has been pretty good. Quite like Thai, but the curries are thicker. All good. We went to a weird little restaurant where their speciality is a soup that you make yourself called chnnang dei. They're supposed to bring the raw ingredients over and a big clay pot is put on a stove and you just mix it all in however you like. We obviously looked like a couple of clowns that that was going to be beyond, so all the staff came and watched as one of the girls made it for us while we sat and watched. They were all pissing themselves. Was quite funny.

From Phnom Penh we travelled to the south coast of Cambodia and Sihanoukville, where we've been relaxing by the sea on the beach for the past week. Don't have time to update about that but will in due course. We are heading back to Phnom Penh tomorrow for a night before venturing over the border to Vietnam.....

From Bangkok we started off our mission to get to Cambodia. According to all the literature this is one of the most complicated border crossings that you can encounter anywhere in the world, mainly because everyone and anyone is trying to scam you along the way. We were warned off taking tourist buses which can take 20 hours, deliberately so, in order that you arrive at Siem Reap at 5 am and go for whatever overpriced accommodation they drop you at. So in order to avoid this we did it all oursleves. We had a few adventures on the way as expected. We took a local bus to the border town of Aranyaprathet on the Thai side.

From there we took a tuk tuk to the border, and had to stop the driver taking us to a travel agent instead of the border. In fact he didn't take us right to the border. He dropped us short of it at a group of touts who offered to do our Visa's for us, and told us that we wouldn't be able to get a Cambodian Visa at the border. Bollocks. We managed to avoid them and headed to the border control. Departing Thailand was all very straightforward. We then walked across nomans land - which is a case of dodging all of the begging children before going to the Cambodian Visa office. I lost the rag a bit here.

We filled out our applications and took them to the counter - above which there is a large sign requesting $20 for a tourist visa. We were served by a very officious looking character in a military uniform. I had calculated $20 as being about 800 baht each so passed this over to him with the applications. He flatly refused the 1600 baht, saying that it would be 2000 baht. I in turn refused and told him that it was 1600 baht. He sat down and read his paper and ignored me, which got me a bit angry. He kept saying it was 1000 baht. I kept telling him he was a liar and that I knew it was only 800. After a bit of more of that, I then went into my rucksack and produced $20 each for the visa. His response to this was that it was $25 each, despite the clear sign above his head stating $20. I did a bit of pointing at the sign and shouting at him, but he wouldn't budge. Then he shouted at me that it was only $20 if you prearranged the Visa in Bangkok, and if I wanted to do that then it would take 24hours! I was apoplectic by this stage and pulled out my mobile and shouted at him that I was going to phone my embassy, the British embassy, to find out what they had to say about that.......and he accepted the 800 baht each and gave us the Visas. Absolute joker. But I won. Just before I get criticised for being tight (as the difference between 1600 and 2000 baht is about 6 quid) it's the principal that really annoys me, that some fat twat who sits drinking coffee, reading the paper and smoking fags in his uniform can demand extra money (and get it most of the time), just because he's wearing a uniform, is just wrong. Especially when there are children begging in the streets outside his office. So corrupt it made me want to strangle the guy. Anyway, we then went to the next office to get a stamp and we were in Cambodia. No sooner had we stepped into the country than we were escorted to a free bus to the "bus station''. Turned out the ''bus station'' was 100 yards up the road and was a travel agent. We agreed with another couple who we met on the bus to share a taxi to Siem Reap. We went into the ''bus station'' and there was a guy with a piece of paper with various pricings for buses and taxis to Siem Reap. At the top of the paper, which was clearly something he had typed up himself was "Ministery of Transportation of Cambodia''. The prices were ridiculously overinflated and so we went outide into the street and got a guy off the street to drive us there for half the price.

The difference between Cambodia and Thailand is immediate. The tarmac road stops at the Thai side, and continues as a very dusty, pot-holed, dirt track all the way 160km to Siem Reap. The journey took us around 3.5 hours. The countryside is so beautiful though.

We drove past loads of little rural towns, with children playing in the paddies at the side of the road, animals roaming about the place, people living in little thatched houses on stilts, people fishing in the ponds beside the road. Very reminiscent of Central America. Unfortunately Siem Reap is a bit different. It's a bit of a sprawling mess of Massive Super Hotels for the wealthy. We got dropped on the outskirts of town and picked up by a tuk tuk. Turned out the reason for this is that they want to secure a fare for the day after to the Temples at Angkor, which are just outside the town. We went with our guy and arranged for him to collect us at 9 am the next morning. He dropped us at our hotel and we checked in. Crashing back to reality after our time in Bangkok. Nobody greeting us with jasmine garnets, no lifts for anyone to be waiting to press the button. Our room was sparse to say the least, and the warning on the back of the door was a bit of a shock.

Cambodia is clearly very poor. Everywhere we've been there are very young children begging, or selling books or trinkets. It's all a bit sad. There are also a lot of people begging missing limbs, presumably as a result of coming into contact with one of the hundreds of landmines that are still present in the countryside. We succumbed to one little boy, who couldn't have been older than about 8, who asked where we were from? We replied ''Scotland'' to which he immediately reeled off "Scotland. Capital Edinburgh. Population 5 million people. Minus two. You know why? Because you 2 are here''.

On our first night we went out for an amazing meal at a crazy little restaurant in town called the Dead Fish Tower. Not the most appealing name, but it is so unique. It is laid out on various different levels and has a really cool atmosphere. Coolest of all though is the pond and the crocodile pit that they have right down at the bottom. The food was really tasty and the beer really cheap (Cambodia is so cheap mug of draught beer for 40p). After our meal we ventured downstairs to see the crocodiles. First we stopped off at the pond.

There was a huge fish about a couple of feet long lurking about in there. I decided it would be funny to try and tease it by hanging my finger over the water above its face.

It looked like it was recoiling away, but it turned out to be readying itself to attack, as a second after this photo was taken it lunged right out of the water at me. I was just quick enough to get away, but screamed like a little girl, much to the amusement of all the staff who had gathered to watch. Jenny just about wet herself. After I'd calmed down we went to have a look at the crocodiles.

Turned out you could feed them dead fish which was good fun. Jenny enjoyed this a lot. There were loads of them all living under the floorboards. They all looked in pretty good nick as well.

The next morning we were rudely awoken at 7.30 by drilling and banging right outside our room, so we upped and left to go to a better place. We then hooked up with our driver - riding a motor bike pulling a carriage that we sat in. We negotiated $12 for the day and set off to Angkor. Angkor is a massive site of temples built during the Khmer empire that controlled Cambodia. The Khmers built a vast array of temples to worship their Gods and bury their kings. They were clearly an amazing bunch given how intricate the temples are.

The first temple we came to was Angkor Wat. This place is sijmply incredible. As far as temples go this one is mindblowing. The sheer scale of it is as impressive as the ornateness of its design. It was built in the 12th century which makes it even more special.

I'm not really that fussed by temples but this place is just magnificent. It has a moat all the way round it and ponds with pink and white lotus flowers floating on them. It's just an awesome sight. Jenny's perhaps not quite as enthusiastic as I am about it she said ''if it had been built by a monkey then I'd be impressed''. I think she was quite impressed though, and there were some monkeys stealing stuff from tourists, and some elephants roaming about the roads to keep her baredom levels down.

The next temple that we visited, Bayon, was really impressive too.

It has lots of faces carved into the rocks towering up the sides and the centre of the inner temple. Jenny was a bit more enthusiastic about this one, however that was tempered a bit by the fact that she had her bottom pinched by a Japanese tourist (of which there must have been several million in the entire complex). We went to see another couple of temples, one which you could climb right up to the very top of, on very narrow, shaky stairs.

There is another temple that has been made famous by the film Tomb Raider that was filmed there, and a final one where they have made no effort to protect the structure from nature, resulting in huge octopus-like tree roots strangling and warping the stone walls.

Both of these were pretty amazing also, however we ran out of camera battery unfortunately. We were supposed to hang around for a couple of hours longer to watch the sunset, but it was clouding over, and both of us were shattered, wo we gave that a miss and got our delighted driver to take us back.

We've just been taking it easy for today and are probably going to venture south to Phnom Phen.......