So we had two nights of debauchery, taking full advantage of the Happy Hour beers (at about 15p you can’t really afford not to!) and cheap cocktails, and dancing to cheesy europop.

The only problem was that, due to the nightly festivities, by day the beach was not so nice; and was swarming with people – kids mainly – trying to flog us various things that we really didn’t need (after telling them No for the fifth or sixth time it starts to grate.) So, on the advice of someone that we’d met fleetingly some two weeks previously, we packed up all our worldly belongings (which conveniently fit in a back-pack) and took a boat taxi to Ottres Beach, 5k down the coast.

Ottres Beach was as close to paradise as we’re ever likely to get. We stayed in a bungalow literally 20 yards from the sea, and by day relaxed on the pristine white beach and swam in the unbelievably warm crystalline blue water. It was so secluded (largely because it doesn’t feature in the Lonely Planet guidebook) that our friends and us were pretty much alone on the beach. One unexpected bonus was the sunset: unreal.

Apparently the bamboo bars, restaurants and guest houses which adorn the beach front are all earmarked for destruction within 2 years, and the big hotel chains are moving in. So we feel incredibly lucky to have experienced this amazing beach as it is now. We only planned to spend 2 nights in Sihanoukville, but we’re still here a week later!

We’ve sufficiently recharged our batteries to tackle the next country on our itinerary…Vietnam! Bus to Ho Chi Minh City (previously Saigon) tomorrow morning, a mere 12 hours.

The best way to describe the bamboo railway is as a prolonged rollercoaster ride. The ‘train’ itself is more like a wooden bed, and is driven by a petrol motor. We each got on the back of a moto (a scooter driven by a local) and were taken on a drive through some beautiful Cambodian countryside, stopping on the way to chat to some local kids and take some photos, before arriving at the bamboo railway ‘station’. The track stretched in a dead straight line far into the horizon and the train built up some real speed! It was actually much more fun than it sounds!

The next day we took a 10 hour bus journey to Sihanoukville – our first beach!

We awoke at 4:30 in order to catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat, the biggest and most emblematic temple (in fact, the biggest religious building in the world). It was kind of spooky to be wandering round the ancient temple in the pre-dawn darkness, with the only light coming from the intermittent camera flashes of hordes of Japanese tourists. We were glad we got up early, however,when the sun finally rose over the three towers and most of the tourists went for breakfast, so we could wander round Angkor Wat in relative peace.

The temple itself comprises the 3 symbolic towers surrounded by cloisters and corridors of adjoined ante-chambers, some filled with the fragrant smoke of jos sticks and ascetic monks preying to statues of Buddha (which is interesting because it was originally a Hindu temple). There was a huge garden surrounded by an outer wall and finally a gigantic moat, which must’ve been wider than the Thames at London.

We visited about 8 temples throughout the day, the noteworthy ones being Bupha – a temple of 316 sculpted heads and an amazing bas-relief scene depicting ancient Khmer life – and Tha Phrom, where large trees have grown through the temple itself. At the end of the day we climbed the highest temple to see the sun set, only to find it completely obscured by clouds! Ah well…

Words don’t really do the temples justice. Unfortunately neither can pictures because the battery ran out on our camera!

Siem Reap itself is a fairly lively town. It’s very much geared towards tourism, but in a more palatable way than other cities we’ve visited; sparkling hotels are shouldered in with smaller, though no less clean, guest houses. We stayed in a lovely room with a hot shower and a TV for about 4 pounds a night. In fact, all the guest houses in Cambodia so far have been excellent, let’s see what Battambang brings!

Anyway, the reason we came to Phnom Penh was to visit Stul Treung and the Killing Fields. These are sites which the Cambodians have maintained as a vivid testimony to the genocidal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the hope that, by remembering and showing the rest of the world, the same thing will never happen again.

Stul Treung was once a school in the centre of Phnom Penh. It was converted into a prison by the Khmer Rouge and re-named S-21. Outside there were some living victims of the Khmer Rouge, maimed and disfigured beggars clamouring for money. Once inside, we were greeted by hundreds of black and white photos, the haunted faces of the detainees of S-21, the majority of which were tortured: hacked, bludgeoned, beaten and electrocuted. Those that survived were subsequently bussed to the Killing Fields.

Just a few of the victims…

It was chilling to realise that you’re standing on the same grubby floor on which these atrocities happened, looking at the same iron bedsteads that those cadaverous faces were manacled to each night before a fresh bout of terror each morning. Such was the gravity of the place that everyone walked round separately in a reverent, bewildered silence. There was also a museum there which gave a history of the Khmer Rouge revolution, its breathtaking brutality – over 2 million killed – and its infuriating hypocrisy. An example being the fact that anyone with an inkling of intelligence was mercilessly slaughtered, yet Pol Pot himself was educated at a Parisian university.

After Stul Treung we visited the Killing Fields, about 10k outside of Phnom Penh. Whilst not as emotionally stirring as the prison – perhaps because it was outside and the sounds of children playing in an adjacent school floated by – it was still gruesome. There were hundreds of bunkers which were once mass graves, a macabre temple of human skulls that had been excavated, and a wizened tree against which children and babies were bashed to death.

Whilst it must be difficult for them, the Cambodians have done an admirable thing in retaining these two sites as a stark reminder of a brutal all-too-recent past. You have to admire their spirit, and the way they have rebuilt the country in the wake of such tragedy; although you do find yourself looking at middle-aged men, imagining the iniquities they must have witnessed, and were they victims or perpetrators?