Cartoon Bank Robbers in Angkor Wat, Cambodia

I literally loved my time in Cambodia and I know it's largely due to the company I kept. When I arrived in Pnom Penh, my first stop in the country, I had the added excitement of seeing my fave couple TJ and Alex again. It always happens that you'll bump into the same people along any trail of a region and these two were a sight for sore eyes after only 2/3 weeks apart. LOVE YOU GUYS!

It was a few sombre days together as having just spent time in the awakening War Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Pnom Penh was about to open my eyes to Cambodia's harrowing history under the rule of Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge. As it seems with every SE Asian country, I had embarrassingly little knowledge of the mass genocide of the 70s. From the city you can visit the Killing Fields, where so many were massacred and the S21 prison, a school converted to meet the needs of the violent interrogations that took place over this period. Below is a photo of just one of the rows skulls found in the Killing Fields, young people slaughtered as they were seen as a threat to the ruling government.

From Pnom Penh, I travelled to a small town with a river running through it called Kampot. Here I met a couple of dutch guys, Dimitri and Jasper, and we explored the area together on the back of mopeds. These couple of days remain up there with my favourite experiences so far. The boys were such a laugh. We tried the local fresh noodles, pancakes, saw the national park and saw the largest birds known to man fly over us, I'm still pretty certain it was a flying dinosaur.

After endless journeys on buses and trains, being able to make our own choices on where to go and where to stop was liberating. Our bike trip to the fishing village of Kep on the coast was probably my ultimate, most authentic, Cambodian 'experience'. We drove up to the market and found ourselves surrounded by the most delicious looking seafood being chopped up, grilled, fried. Giant prawns on a stick, squid on a stick, tentacles and all (mouth-wateringly fantastic), other unidentifiable fish, on a stick. YUM. Left and right we observed the Cambodians chaotically haggling for food, we were pretty much the only tourists there.

The main commotion was happening by the sea front, we saw people gathered around what looked to be large picnic baskets being hoisted from the sea and once the basket was open they would snoop around and point inside. We realised we'd found the reason we'd come to this place - for fresh crab! Jasper went over to claim some for us, they give you however much you want in weight - we went for a kilo between the two of us which came to the equivalent of 4 quid each for about 4 or 5 decent-sized crabs each! So Jasper had a bag full of live crab with their legs tied together to stop a massacre occuring.

In the corner of the market we saw the women sat by massive black pots, half the size of me, with what appeared to be boiling water - we gathered this was where we needed to cook our crab. After some negotiation and about 20 mins of boiling later, our seafood was returned to us, steaming, dead and the healthy pinky/orange you'd expect (not the grey/white it was before). We ordered rice with chilli sauce and then stared at our crab wondering how on earth we were going to get into them with just our hands. By the third crab each we were pros at using our forks as leverage to prize open legs and bodies. It was deeeelicious. One of the boys did get the shits though...

I travelled to Sihanoukville and met up with two English lads that I'd first met a few days earlier in Pnom Penh. George and Jordi.

Like everyone they met, I assumed they were travelling together and had been best buds since they were babies but as it turned out they'd only met a couple of weeks earlier in Vietnam and stuck together since. The reason everyone thinks their age-old friends is because they literally had the funniest dynamic, the ultimate bromance.

George says 'yeah like Ant and Dec' but it's not, it's like you need a cynical/grumpy bastard (Jordi, right) and an endlessly happy-go-lucky type (George, left) bouncing off each other like Mark Wahlberg and Will Farrell in The Other Guys or maybe Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in The Trip. They would deny it but that's these guys in a nutshell. They ripped me apart constantly and wound me up more than I thought possible but they also made me laugh harder than anyone else and I love them for it because I didn't leave their side for the rest of my SE Asia trip.

As soon as I arrived I jumped on an all you can drink booze cruise with the boys and although it would ordinarily not be my scene, it was a good crowd so I got involved. This transpired into one of the funniest, craziest nights that I have literally barely any memory of (sorry parents but it was always going to happen at least once!). To sum up and skim over A LOT, I lost my top, sunglasses and my flip flops got stolen but at least I found them the next morning... on George's feet. (His got stolen so he thought he'd swipe someone elses).

Needless to say the boat ride to the island of Koh Rong the next day was a ropey one.

This small island is probably one of my favourites, it's just a strip of bars and hostels along the beach with bungalows at either side and that's about it. You can't book ahead on this island and the internet was more often out of action than functioning so we searched around for a bungalow that would take the five of us. Two of my fave Canadians, Jordan and a Jesus look-a-like, Graham would also be joining us. We managed to bag a beachfront bungalow, literally a wooden hut with a couple of double beds, mosquito nets and a toilet without a flush (oh that's what the giant bucket of water and the pan were for!) but we were made up, the sea was clear blue and it was at our doorstep. We took off our flip flops and didn't pick them up again until we left the island.

The best day had to be our trip to long beach. It was a mighty trek over hills and forest in 30 degree heat, we were sweating from places we didn't think were possible, noses? Necks? But once we got to the other side of the island and saw the sand... so white it was hard to look straight at with the sun reflecting back and so pure that it actually squeaked, like really SQUEAKED. I'm 78% certain the expression 'squeaky clean' was inspired by this exact beach.

Our group grew as we met a couple of great girls from the Isle of Wight (Granny, you've probably met them!), Beth and Martha. Together we stayed until the sunset and took a boat back to the main strip, we laughed and partied until the sun came up over the water and went swimming as day started to light up around us.

Jordi, George and I left the others and got the overnight 'hotel' bus from Sihanounkville to Siem Reap. One of the odder forms of transport I've been on, it's like someone tried to make the Knight Bus from Harry Potter a reality.

It had single beds along the bottom and top that fit two average sized people a little snuggly. There were curtains along the sides too. I'm not going to lie I was desperate for some random Cambodian guy to end up in a bunk snuggling up to Jordi but no luck!

Siem Reap town is known for its proximity to the most famous temple in all Asia, Angkor Wat. It is actually out of this world impressive. You can buy tickets that last a few days or one that includes a sunset and sunrise. We spent an evening watching the sunset there with Tom, our new buddy from Blackpool. It was incredibly busy both times but I think we made the most of it. George especially, as he made it a mission to photo-bomb as many shots as possible in his classic pose, not dissimilar to a runway models final stance, arm on hip and hair flick. Very funny.

The amount of people waiting for the sun to rise behind Angkor Wat was staggering. George described the moment pretty accurately by saying it's like everybody is 'waiting around for a really shit gig'. There must have been at least 200 people there.

We watched the sun come up through the haze and got our pictures. Some douchebag decided it'd be a good idea to cross the lake in front of the temple (and therefore landing himself in 200 people's shots) to avoid the crowds on our side. He started to self-consciously creep across, as if the steathlier and more like a cartoon bank robber he acted, the less likely it would be to see him?! It was hilarious though, like a streaker at a football game, people started heckling aggressively 'get out the way!', 'what the hell are you doing?!', the American in front of us screamed. His awesome shot through his giant camera on his unnecessarily large tripod had been ruined and he was acting as if the sun wouldn't continue to rise now this had happened, like it was shy and would bob back behind the temple now the bank robber had come too close. Great memory, too funny.

We went to get breakfast and laughed at the vast amount of people still standing staring, cameras at the ready. Then we realised we'd missed the best part of the sun rise, at just the right height in the sky. Damnit!

We got a tuktuk from temple to temple (it's literally a massive space) and as the morning went on it just got hotter and hotter. The steps up and down the temples were steep and some of us (Tom) suffered more than others. We loved Ta Phrom, which is the temple famous for Tomb Raider having been filmed there. The jungle has just taken over and there trees growing and around the building for hundreds of years made it a spectacular sight to see.

My time had ended in Cambodia and it remains one of my highlights of the trip, from the culture and sights of the country to the great company in every place I visited. I said goodbye to the boys temporarily as I knew I'd be seeing them on the Thai islands soon and caught my flight from Siem Reap back to Bangkok.