Bangkok

We had four nights in Bangkok, which is not enough to do this city justice. The city itself is huge, with sprawling spaghetti overpasses, skyscrapers, shopping malls, street hawkers and the Skytrain, which is excellent. The first day I just went shopping, mainly for other people's computers, as three people bought new ones in Pantip Plaza, five floors of tech heaven. I remain computer-less, as my choice of machine is apparently unavailable here.

Being a tourist in Bangkok seems to result in weird experiences happening quite regularly. Tim, one of our crew, was contacted by a producer from TAN, an English language Thai TV channel, who had seen the truck and was interested in interviewing him for a segment on one of their shows. Tim, being the fine, stand-up bloke that he is, immediately volunteered four of us to do it instead, including me. So the stage was set, the camera crew and interviewer arrived the next day and started filming us and the truck. It turned out quite well as it happens, the questions were well thought out and allowed for decent answers and the volunteers performed well imho.

One question they asked of all of us was, "Where is your favourite place on the truck?" My favourite is the roof seats, and they were quite impressed when we showed them how they worked. It is rather surreal sitting on the roof of the truck in the middle of Bangkok with a cameraman standing at the far end whilst explaining what my definition of the truck is. This is my second TV appearance on this trip, the first was in a rooftop restaurant in Lhasa, but the difference here is that we will get DVDs of the finished show, which should be good for a laugh.

Weird TV show out of the way, experiencing Thai culture was next on the agenda. I visited the Grand Palace, which is the main residence of the Royal family here, making it the equivalent of Buckingham Palace in the UK. Here though, it is more of a complex of buildings than just one. It is, as you would expect, magnificent, with ornate buildings, a museum housing coins and Royal clothes and jewellery, and dress guards on either side of the entrance. What I did not expect were the squads of real, heavily armed guards dotted around the place: clearly here they err on the side of caution. I did want to see the reclining Buddha statue near the Palace, but it was so hot that I gave up and went back to the hotel.

There are a few men on the trip who are, like me, single, and so no trip to Bangkok would be complete without a visit to the red light district to see a ping pong show. Well, I did say that experiencing Thai culture was next!

We tried to find our own ping pong show but ended up in an establishment which was probably the worst strip club in the world. It was indescribably bad, suffice it to say that I did not think it was possible to be so turned off in a room full of naked women. Bangkok has no shortage of strip clubs, however, and it was easy to find a better one. It is not easy to find ping pong though, and we eventually had to admit defeat and ask a tuk-tuk driver to take us to one.

So here we were, watching unusually talented ladies do unusual things with no clothes on. What made it even more odd was the rest of the small crowd watching: all tourists, mainly women, some Japanese businessmen, all clapping politely when the performer did her thing. It must be odd to be talented in this department, there are not many career options open to one with such skills. Perhaps this is for the best.

Pics are Bangkok from one of the many motorway overpasses, a part of the Palace and a detail from a mural inside the Palace. No ping pong pics unfortunately.

Cambodia

We only have six nights in Cambodia, and now, on the last night, I can say that this is nowhere near enough. I will definitely come back here at some point, there is so much of the country we simply haven't had time to see.

However, what we have seen has been great. Our first stop, the capital Phnom Penh, was a surprisingly pleasant city which I really enjoyed. Wat Phnom, the legendary location of the founding of the city is a pretty temple on a small hill populated mainly by beggars and monkeys, and is almost the only touristy bit of the city I saw. This is partly due to the rain, which is torrential when it decides to appear.

We took a tour the next day which visited the decidedly miserable Tuol Sleng genocide museum, and the infamous Killing Fields. The museum is housed in a complex which was a prison during the days of the Khmer Rouge for important prisoners like political enemies and intellectuals. Before this it was a secondary school. It is a strangely sterile place to visit, with no feeling left of the acts which took place there, but this doesn't mean it leaves you unaffected.

The Killing Fields are actually only one of dozens of similar sites dotted across Cambodia, where mass executions took place, this site just happens to be the one nearest Phnom Penh, and the one used for the prisoners in Tuol Sleng. It is now a memorial to the people who died there, with a monument containing the skulls and clothes of the people exhumed from one of the mass graves there. Again, it is grim, and again, it feels unexpectedly inert, as if time has washed the slate clean of the horrors of the past. The tour walks you through the now beautiful and peaceful paths meandering past the unexcavated mass graves, where it is common to see pieces of clothing and bone coming to the surface of the ground. The guide waits until you are standing on them before he points this out.

In comparison to the war related sights I saw in Vietnam, Cambodia seems to have been able to leave the past behind and move on, I feel that Vietnam still hurts from their recent conflict.

From Phnom Penh it was off to Battambang, the second city of Cambodia, although you would be hard-pressed to believe it. It looks and feels like a Wild West town, but perhaps fortunately we only stayed one night here to be able to get the boat to Siem Reap the next day.

The boat was optional, and cost us foreigners $18. I think the locals paid closer to $5. This was to be the way of things in Cambodia. Regardless, the boat trip was pretty cool, the fields were all flooded and it was impossible to see where the river was at times, the pilot had, however, obviously done this many times before. We passed through several floating villages which were amazing to see, some buildings were on stilts to get above the water, whilst others simply floated on the top. The local schools had flights of steps leading to the water's edge, there were floating pigstys and chicken coops and a mobile phone mast on stilts. Some floating houses even had pool tables inside, don't ask me how they got them in there, or how they play pool on a wobbly boat.

Siem Reap is a town which is booming thanks to its proximity to Angkor Wat, and the hordes of tourists that it attracts. The town itself is tourist central, with loads of hotels, restaurants, bars, and high prices. To be fair, if you had just flown in from the UK, you would think that it was all quite cheap, but compared to what it should cost here, Siem Reap is a rip-off.

The complex of temples around Angkor Wat however, is worth every penny, and then some. We only had time to see the small circle, which includes just the most famous temples, but even this was amazing. The highlight was of course the Tomb Raider temple, which I think is called Ta Prohm. Walking through this temple is just like being in a computer game: it is so different to anything else that it is difficult to suspend your disbelief even though it is all real. Also, you can pretty much wander wherever you want, through collapsing doorways, over rubble, up on top of roofs, and no one says anything, just like a computer game.

We have one more night in Siem Reap, and then off to Bangkok for four nights of hedonistic mayhem.

Pics are the Tomb Raider temple, our luxury boat to Siem Reap, some floating houses and the skyline of Phnom Penh.