Our Wicked Oz adventure

So where was I? Ah yes, a garage in Perth suburbia, where we picked up our west coast wheels: an infamous 'Wicked' campervan. With its peeling, Beatles paint job on the outside and the elaborate doodles and musings from happy campers on the inside, this was not just our transport: this was home for the next month.

And how we cherished our Beatle wagon, from the single-ringed, portable stove and classroom-style table to the ancient foam mattresses and safety-pinned curtains.

We turned up the radio, wound down the windows and headed south of Perth to explore the Margaret river area for the next week. The south-west coast of Australia is a land of vineyards and world-famous surf, where our first lunch-stop over-looking Geographe Bay served up accidental whale and seal watching across the blue, blue ocean. Life was good on the road, down under.

We pulled up in campsites on the cusp of the brilliant, turquoise coastline and in the heart of stunning National Parks, only meeting a handful of 'Grey Nomads' - exuberantly friendly Aussies who have been on the road since retirement.

We also met our first roo on arrival at our first National Park campsite. Right next to our camper was a mother and her baby joey, who immediately alerted their ears and eyes to our arrival.

The joey bounded around but, as we got closer, decided to hide and climbed right into his mum's pouch for safety. "How lucky we are!" we gasped. In fact, we would see hundreds of roos thereafter and we were surrounded each night we camped in Margaret River territory. Who needs television for evening entertainment?

We quickly got used to the bush-style, compost toilets in the National Parks and I soon forgot to check every toilet for spiders, snakes, unknown flying insects, massive biting ants and everything else before sitting down.

Australia has more things that can kill you than anywhere else and as many as a third of its species remain entirely unknown to scientists. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are from Australia. Not to mention the spiders, jellyfish, the blue-ringed octopus, the most lethal of their type in the world (to mention just a few). At this point, before any of you start thinking how brave I am, I have to admit that on my first day in Australia, I could be found erratically

checking the room, beds, even our clothes and bags for spiders - and we were still in the city centre. Camping in the bush for a month soon bashes that fear our of you; there would be no sleeping or exploring if you had man-eating spiders on the brain.

We certainly explored the area: sea, sun, surf, towering forests and vineyards. We learned how it felt to have our own private beach (we wouldn't have to share many all the way up the coast to Darwin) and there was no better feeling than watching the Australian sun bounce off the huge surf as the breeze tousled with our unwashed hair. Or perhaps there is: drinking locally produced "goon" (an Aussie term for cheap boxes of wine -"goon" is derived from the word "flagon" (a drinking vessel), but mistakenly thought to be an Aborigine name by tourists (goons!)) and cooking a BBQ by a river with no one else around, just the roos and possums for company.

In this small pocket of south-west Australia, we were free, we had our independence and it was exhilarating. Thankfully, we were heading north the day the controlled bush fires got out of hand and destroyed large areas of forest and people's homes. A reminder of the vast, and often unruly country we are in.

We're off to see the wizard...

It finally arrived, our flight to Australia. Med had dreamt of this moment since he first picked up a surf board and took to the icy waters of the English channel. I was more excited for him than for myself - he all but kissed the ground as we stepped out into the cloudless sunshine from Perth airport.

Arriving from the whirlwind of dust, chaos, haggling and traffic of S.E. Asia is surely the best way to step foot on Australian soil; the pavements gleam, the windows sparkle and there is an overwhelming feeling of things being familiar, but better. This is Australia, after all. Land of golden sands, turquoise waters, big rocks, even bigger sharks, and Neighbours.

Australia is the world's sixth largest country and its largest island. It is the only island that is also a continent, and the only continent that is also a country (thanks, Bill Bryson). So it's big, exuberantly big. And there's no place on earth like it.

We skipped around the glittering streets of Perth, embracing the novelty of supermarkets, green parks and breezy, sunny days. However, there was nothing novel about the prices. Watching Neighbours at 5.35pm for 13 years does not teach you how astronomically expensive Australia is. Food, beer, accommodation, clothes all threatened to eat through our savings in one big, greedy gulp. Time to get thrifty, or as the Aussies say, "povo".

Thankfully, the best things in life are free, and that has never been more true than in Australia. We took in the views of high rises and the Swann river from King's Park, and pottered around the former convict port of Fremantle (or "Freo" to locals - if in doubt, just add an 'o') - a relaxed, eclectic and eco-conscious hang out across the river. And then came a moment we had salivated over when picking at stringy, indiscriminate meat in Asia: our first Aussie barbie.

Really, this was an Irish barbie shindig as we met up with Mark and Aoife, our travelling friends from Vietnam and Cambodia, and they introduced us to a whole bunch of their Irish pals for a feast and singalong. Perth is half Irish, it turns out. Thanks guys, we miss you!

With great relief, we checked out of our doss house of a hostel and went to a garage on the outskirts of town. And it was in that dirty, dilapidated garage that our Western Australia adventure began.

Malaysia, truly Asia

So you've seen the advert on the telly, with the nauseatingly sung strapline: "Malaysia, truly Asia."

Yes, it is Asia, but mostly it's all the bad parts of Asia. The rip offs, the rudeness, the daily frustrations, the engine fumes, the lorry-loads of tourists descending on beautiful landscapes. So, Malaysia and I didn't get off to the best start, but it was intended as a week of relaxing and recharging by the sea - and for that, it lived up to expectations.

There were of course great positives, and we ate our way through most of those. Roti, dosas, iced Milo (a sweet, chocolate drink), grilled salted corn, chicken satay. We eagerly looked forward to our next opportunity to stuff our faces.

But, despite the cheap, delicisou food, the island of Langkawi seemed like one money making scheme after another. Although the island is 478 square kilometers and it’s filled to the brim with tourists, public transportation is conspicuously absent. Instead, visitors can use the over-priced taxis governed by one hell of a well-organized taxi mafia.

Then, if you want to escape the island, you have to join an over-priced island hopping tour, each one carbon copy of the next but everyone pays a different price. Thankfully, we were the ones being told to keep quiet about how little we paid for the trip.

We had high hopes of going diving around the smaller islands - but not for more than double the price you would pay across the water on a Thai island.

So, in the spirit of independent travel (and thriftiness), Med and I decided to rent a motorbike and drive around the island on our own. We wound our away along the well-paved streets past gas stations, hotels and shopping centers until we came to parts of the island that were refreshingly green and impressively undeveloped. There we found our tropical beaches, unspoilt views of soaring karst mountains and emerald waters. Peace at last.

We won't be rushing back to Malaysia, but I would give anything for a banana roti for 30p right now.

Tomb Raiding

Next we journeyed to Siem Reap, gateway to the mighty, mighty Angkor Wat. The very mention of these words conjures up images of lost temples, eastern mysticism and monster trees - no matter where you go in Cambodia, you can not escape the iconic towers of Angkor Wat. The temple is found on the flag, on postcards, on t-shirts, and even on the national beer.

We travelled from our modest, rural homestay to the the bright lights of Siem Reap, seeing the muddy aftermath of the recent flooding of Cambodia's flat, rural terrain. Most traditional Khmer homes are built on stilts, but for some that still was enough to keep them standing. We watched as people took small wooden boats to their front doors or tightroped across spindly bridges built using tree branches that hadn't been engulfed in the huge swell of the Mekong river. Tops of trees peeped out from the water just beyond the houses, and men were still spending their days trying to pull and surviving crops from underwater to feed their families

As we chugged into Siem Reap that night, a tuk tuk driver named Pao took us to our hotel and instantly offered us his services to take us around the temples. Aha, back to the tricks of the tuk tuk trade and like that we were thrust into the city race and chase once more. It was a contrast we weren't prepared for and, over a dinner of traditional amok and loc lac, I heard myself saying to Med: "it's too noisy here, shall we just go back to the hotel?" In my defence, we were still exhausted from our adventure and it was pushing 10.30pm!

After a day adjusting to the Siem Reap scene, we accepted the inevitable and hired Pao's services for a sunset tour of the temples. If you can't beat them (off with a stick), join them.

The great temples of Angkor, which are an UNESCO heritage site, were constructed between

800 and 1200 AD and served as the seat of the mighty Khmer empire. The Angkor complex contains over a thousand weathered temples and is believed to be the largest religious structure in the world. The site supported what would become the largest city of the pre-industrial world. While London had a population of 50,000 and was building cathedrals during this period, one million people lived in the Angkor kingdom during its height. Today, they offer a crumbling window into the life of the time. Hindu symbols mix with serene Buddhist expressions, carving historical reminders of how different religions ebbed and grew with the changing power of kings.

People now use the term 'Angkor Wat' to describe

the whole area, but in fact there are many, many

Wats. Standing tall in big compounds, little compounds, some with sculptures, some stripped bare, all spread out over a large area (all the way into Thailand, actually). The infamous Angkor Wat rises majestic from the forest of temples -

and would be our first glimpse as we journeyed by tuk tuk for some sunset viewing from Phnom Bakheng.

Bakheng Hill is the elevated temple from which almost everyone watches the sunset in Angkor. It's a truly beautiful sight, although incredibly crowded. It was like arriving for a big music concert, with security waiving everyone up a steep path to get us all there in time. We had to do a comedy walk sideways up the narrow stone steps as they have been eroded over thousands of years.

The sun glowed hot and red as it sank down into the treeline, illuminating the sky in a pink spotlight. If you didn't look left or right, or in front or behind you at the other people, and wore ear plugs to block out their murmurings, it was perfect. "Hmm," we thought, maybe we should have followed the advice of something we read online about a temple further away for sunset.

But maybe another 100 people had the same idea. This is Asia sightseeing at it's finest.

The next part of the story nearly didn't happen: sunrise at Angkor Wat. We set our alarm for 4.30am, went for an early night...and then woke up to our hotel phone ringing at 5.20am. A few seconds to realise where we were and we leapt out of bed, threw on some clothes, brushed our teeth (this one is for mum) and hurtled out the door five minutes later to find Pao waiting in his tuk tuk. "Put your foot on it Pao!" and put his foot on it he did!

We arrive just in time to see the striking silhouette of the five towers of Angkor Wat against the milky pink, morning dim. Locals are selling coffee and tea, groups of people hold cameras up to the sky and whispers of tourists float on the hush of silence all around.

The perfect symmetry of the shadowy reflections and the scattering of lotus flowers on the water made for a breathtaking sight. The new morning sun illuminated the temple carvings and intricate spires. Monkeys climbed on the ancient walls, unaware of their significance. A dodgy alarm clock couldn't ruin this moment.

To get ahead of the crowds, and to the confusion of Pao, we leapt out of Angkor earlier than most to head to Bayon, a crumbling complex known for it's gazing stone faces. The main attraction here, Angkor Thom, is decorated with 216 faces of Avalokitshvara (I'll admit I had to look that one up) along with 12,000 meters of bas-reliefs (that too) and around 11000 figures (yep, and that one) all of which add up to a sight even more impressive than the last.

As the sun rose high into the sky, we left Bayon and we tuk tukked on to several other temples, including the Ta Prohm, where the surrounding jungle has moved in a taken up residence amongst the aged stonework.

The film Tomb Raider was famously shot here, and today it's as overgrown with tourists asking about Angelina Jolie as it is with trees. Still, the huge mangled and contorted tree roots engulfing the ruins was a sight to behold; mother nature reclaiming what is rightfully hers.

By 2.30pm, we were templed out and in need of shade. We just don't have the stamina for 12 hours of sightseeing and I am bemused by the

tourists who do. The ones with their multi-functional rucksacks, brimmed hats, expensive walking shoes and suncream hanging from their necks. The ones who seem to evade sweat and dirt in their light-coloured clothing and have a guide who speaks ten languages showing them round. Well, we can't handle that pace, so we headed back to our hotel to reflect on the magnitude of what we had just seen.

Of course, as with any Asian sightseeing experience, there was a downside to our Angkor adventure. Cambodian children are the most persistent and canny sellers in South East Asia, and most of them gather to work the crowds of Angkor. Children as young as three or four are sent out begging or selling postcards, bracelets and fans by their families. Charmingly, they memorise English words and facts about the country you're from: "Your capital city is London, the next biggest is Manchester. You have a Queen and lots of rain." Their brown eyes sit wide on their grubby faces and it's so hard to ignore them. Something needs to be done to give these children the opportunities in life they deserve.

Despite this frustrating sadness, something which is tragically as common in Asia as sticky rice, my lingering thought from our Angkor experience was 'pride'. In a country where politics and poverty can so easily pull people apart, it is the pride in their history and heritage that unites all members of society.

A jungle tale

Our big adventure in Koh Kong was still to come. We made contact with a brand new ecotourism outfit in a village one hour out of town, known as CBET (Community Based Eco Tourism). CBET is run but members from the rural community of the region, and employs ex-hunters, loggers and those struggling to make a living to improve the local environment and boost the rural economy.

The tension between economic development and the sustainable management of forests, wildlife, and natural resources in the rural and protected areas of South East Asia is a momentous challenge. Illegal logging, hunting, and clearing for farms threaten the species and the integrity of the forest ecosystems and watersheds. Illegal activities are caused both by poverty and by commercial exploitation of natural resources. International demand for wildlife and wildlife products also contribute to the destruction of biodiversity.

CBET addresses the drivers of deforestation and the demand for wildlife on a local level with financial and technical assistant from Wildlife Alliance. These CBET projects aim to provide villagers with economically and ecologically sustainable income opportunities from tourism and help them protect the biodiversity and natural resources of their region.

We arrived at the CBET office in the small, road-side village of Trapeang Rung to a wide-eyed and smiling welcome party. They had even made a 'Welcome James and Sally' sign - it was a kind touch that made us feel instantly at home.

After a heartfelt introduction from the CBET team, we cycled across dirt track and sand to a small, traditional village by the river to our homestay: a modest, wooden family home where we would stay for the night. We were welcomed once again with opened arms and settled into our simple, homely room.

Our host family spoke not one word of English, not a whisker, so we had to speak Khmer to them as best we could, learning a few choice words and phrases that sent the family and their numerous guests into chortles of laughter each time we spoke. Myt, the gap-toothed lady of the house, would just take my hand into hers and hold it there and that was all the communication we needed.

That afternoon we got our hands dirty making traditional Namchak cakes, a sticky, sweet local delicacy grilled on an open flame and served in palm leave parcels. Simple, delicious and so sugary it's a miracle the villagers have any teeth left at all.

As the sun went down, our new family fed us a feast of pork and dried fish which we ate by the light of a kerosene lamp from a small table in the kitchen, sitting cross-legged on the floor boards and politely accepting the extra helpings they insisted we eat. We said our thanks, I tried and failed to help with the washing up in a bucket and then moved to the wooden step to look out at the stars. But we were quickly hurried off to bed by Myt and it was only 6.20pm! With no way to communicate our puzzlement, we washed by candle light using the tub of water in the bamboo bathroom and then laid on our thin mattress and listened to the comings and goings of the family for the next two hours or more. We never did find out why we were sent to bed so early, but we did have a big day ahead of us.

Early the next morning we cycled on our rickety bicycles to meet our jungle guide, Virak, and our jungle cook, Thyra, who would be our only company and lifeline for the next three days. We were about to trek into the dense Cambodian jungle and through the foothills of the Cardamom mountains. We were going where no man had been before...well, certainly where no tourist had ever been before. We were their first trekkers and that made us a little apprehensive - so this was what a real adventure tastes like.

Virak and Thyra were both ex-hunters and employed by CBET, taught basic English and equipped with a new trade as trekking companions. And as far as trekking companions go, they were the best! We had such good fun, laughing and joking around with them despite the language barrier and the often treacherous conditions on the trek.

Off we set. We sweated through jungle terrain, wading through filthy bogs, flicking off leaches and avoiding the tangles of spider webs. We hiked up a mountain to eat our salty pork, omelette and rice lunch, packed neatly in a little betel nut box - it was lip-smacking tasty and would be our staple meal for the next three days. We then hiked and stumbled down the mountain after spotting bats in a cave and beautiful hornbills, gliding across the infinite views of the thick rainforest that lay ahead of us.

By some miracle, after nearly seven hours of trekking and sweating, we arrived at our humble camp for the night. Med had a nasty blister and my feet looked like wizened prunes - it's like our trekking in Nepal was but a daydream. Virak and Thyra, ever the hard working duo, hung brand new hammocks from the asymmetrical frame that had been erected using trees from the site. And that was camp.

Med and I headed to the river for a wash and let our wet clothes sizzle in the low afternoon sun, still hot and glowing. Thyra, despite having lost one hand in some accident we couldn't quite fathom from the broken English and puzzling charades he used, was amazingly adept and, with the help of Virak, lit a fire and cooked us up a feast of pork, vegetables and rice. The remaining pork was then left out to dry in the sun with our clothes - I pretended not to notice it was crawling with ants! We would eat that pork for another two days.

After dinner, we sat around the fire and drank sweet, hot coffee from small, recycled food tins and watched the stars come out and throw a twinkling blanket over our tiny camp and the vast jungle around us. Into the hammocks we go, a comfy little place to sleep with a mosquito net to keep the bugglies out.

I hardly slept that night as I was on the edge of camp right next to the dense, moving jungle.

Crunch, creep, scamper, squawk.

The next morning, we flopped out of our hammocks as the sun rose, enticed by the streamy wafts of breakfast: rice, omelette and coffee in a tin. As everything at camp was carried on the aching backs of Virak and Thyra, packing up took a while each morning as they methodically crammed their backpacks until bursting point. Today, we insisted on carrying our own lunches in the handmade packs.

With almost-dry socks, we trekked on with a bounce in our step once more, looking up through the sky-scraping trees to follow the calls of jungle birds. We spotted a few gibbons, swinging themselves along the vines - funky, we mused. The dense rainforest gave way to dry plains of white-barked trees and scrub, where we laid out in the shade for lunch of, you guessed it, pork, rice and omelette.

That afternoon, while walking, Thyra leaped in the air and backwards letting out a squeak of surprise. It was an amber snake and a deadly one at that, as Virak demonstrated, crossing his finger across his neck, making a face and saying "die". Expecting a giant cobra, I tiptoed forward for a look at this venomous beast in our path. It was minuscule compared to my imagined enemy, but this made it all the more unsettling. I could stand on one of these at any moment. A few deep breaths later and I'm good to go, my eyes now glued to the leafy, rough terrain underfoot. Within ten minutes, Med then spots another snake, this time black, but equally poisonous.

We are in the middle of the jungle, on a freshly trodden trail and we are surrounded by snakes. I was tense all afternoon, my eyes making snake shapes out of branches and leaves.

That evening's camp was by a huge waterfall, blissful in the last of the sunlight. We went for a swim to shed the day's trekking grime. As we dried off, Med discovered two fat leeches on his bloody blister, which made it bleed without coagulating. My stomach flipped and my knees buckled when he asked for help, so he had to fend for himself.

Meanwhile, I was still on a snake hunt, which made going to the toilet in the jungle away from camp a major event. But as we ate our supper (of pork, omelette and rice) in the fading light by the waterfall, our troubles were washed away and I slept very well indeed that night. I must buy a hammock when I get home.

The last day was another long one, but we enjoyed our breaks of swimming in the river we had to cross and stopping off in a tiny village for lunch. Many of the villagers, including the children, had never seen foreigners before and they were asking Virak about the marks on my skin (my freckles) and said I had a very long, thin nose! "What about his nose?" I cried, pointing at Med's sizable conk. They all just giggled, and carried on pointing at mine. We handed out little packets of biscuits to the children and bought iced coffee made with condensed milk - it was the best coffee I've ever tasted.

As we ambled back towards CBET, you'd think we had returned from a war zone. We received a heroes welcome from the villagers, who were waving and shouting at us and handing our guides a can of beer each. We took Virak and Thyra for an ice cold beer in a small shack and toasted our trek - "jul mouy!"

We headed back to our homestay in the dark, where this time there was no early curfew as there was a bit of a party (on a Monday) happening. The extended family were sat around on the wooden slats drinking beer out of any receptacle they could find (we got a metal bowl), insisting we sit down and join them.

Exhausted, aching and stinking of sweat and leech repellant, we eventually made our excuses and headed for a candlelit bucket shower and bed. Off to the land of nod, dreaming of snakes, waterfalls, rice and pork.

King (Koh) Kong

In Cambodia, it's easy to be swept along in the backpacking trail and head straight from the capital (Fernom, Fernay, as we affectionately call it after a wee mistake by our Irish buddy Mark - must be that accent?) to Siem Reap - all hail the mighty Angkor Wat.

But we wanted to go off the map and try our luck in the Cambodian wilds. So, with little planning and even less of a clue, we jumped on a bus with not a tourist in sight to head to the only town of the region, Koh Kong town.

We'll be honest here, there was nothing in this run down town and our 'off the map' adventure was looking a little down in the mouth.

But we pulled ourselves together and headed to breathtaking and, most importantly, non-touristy waterfalls (memories of falls in Vietnam still make me shudder) and mangrove forests on a motorbike.

Next, we hired a boat to take us to Koh Kong island for the day (the people of the Koh Kong region can't be credited for their imagination when it comes to the naming of places). This was heaven on earth. We spotted dolphins on the boat and then moored up at quiet, uninhabited paradise.

I had never seen sand so fine and white as icing sugar or water so crystaline turquoise. Wading out from the shore I could count every grain of sand caressing my toes and spot each little fish darting around me.

Our grinning guides provided us with snorkel gear and so we headed off to spot fish before tucking into a fire-cooked lunch of succulent barracuda, rice and spiced salad. A perfect day.

The ghosts of Phnom Penh

Next on our journey was Cambodia: a land of ancient triumphs, recent tragedies and undiscovered beauty.

Travelling overland from Saigon, we crossed the border with Aoife and Mark to Phnom Penh. As we stepped out from the arctic bus, the heat hit us straight on, bam! And we hadn't learnt our lesson; we hadn't booked any accommodation. Fending off the very articulate tuk tuk drivers - calling us "man" in phony American accents - we started our ascent to the city's guest house area with 15kg on our backs, snaking from place to place, upstairs, downstairs, round in circles, to find the cheapest deal. This kind of arrival into a city can only be likened to some kind of punishing military training - I'm pretty sure after 12 months of this I'd sail through army recruitment.

It might have a sad history, but Phnom Penh is a lively, energetic city. The riverside bustles with people, day and night. You'll find Hindu and Buddhist worshippers going about their devotions at one of the many temples, families enjoying a stroll together, children playing football, barefoot, with wicker balls (takrah) and large numbers of people group dancing to music blaring from portable stereo systems. This was my favourite part of the riverside: watching (and attempting to join in with) the evening aerobics and hip hop classes that had as many devotees as the neighbouring temples.

With all the living that's going on around you, it's easy to forget what happened here and across the whole country.

After the Vietnam War, on the 17th April 1975, the Khmer Rouge took over the city, and the people cheered in the streets thinking that good things were finally to come for them. But just three hours later their cheers turned into tears as they were told they must pack only essential belongings, leave the city at once and walk for days in the dry heat to become rural peasants. The entire population was forced to labour in agricultural work camps and many families were split up, never to hear from or see each other again.

Money, foreign objects (and all foreigners - some were killed), brightly coloured clothing, all forms of media, religion, school and everything that makes for a civilised society was forbidden. The Khmer Rouge were the dictators, and the peasants were dispensable.

During these four short years between 2 and 3 million people died, either as a direct result of torture and executions (an estimated 1.7 million), or from the starvation and diseases which were rampant during this time. There were no doctors or medicines so the sick were left to die alone in old warehouses.

People worked long hours in the fields and had very little food (they were trading most of the rice the workers grew with China to buy ammunition to fight against the Vietnamese) so they went hungry every day, especially the small children, many of whom just stopped growing. The people were not allowed to talk to each other or show any signs of affection towards each other. Doing so would either have you moved to another site or to a 're-education camp', which normally meant death. Lies were used to remove suspicious individuals from camps and they were never seen or talked about again. They just became ghosts in people's trodden memories.

Anyone with any type of previous education and deemed to pose a threat to the Khmer Rouge, which meant teachers, doctors, ex-government works and lawyers, were usually brought to S-21 (or Tuol Sleng prison) if they were discovered, where they would be tortured for information on anyone else they might know. After that, not only would they be killed, but their whole family would be massacred - including the children - as it was thought that if the children were left alive they might grow up and seek revenge on the Khmer Rouge. Even wearing a pair of glasses was a sign of education and punishable by death. Those with lighter, 'foreign' skin disappeared. And those with soft hands also suffered an untimely death. They were simply no good for the peasant society.

This is only a small part of the story - and I thoroughly recommend the book 'First they killed my father' by Loung Ung - a first hand account of a young child who narrowly escaped with her life, despite her parents and sisters being brutally murdered. I bought my copy off a man whose legs have been blown off by a Khmer Rouge land mine, just to put things into perspective a little bit.

Alongside the mental scars and personal accounts, Cambodia still shows the physical scars of the genocide, no more so than in the many killing fields across the country, used for their discreet locations by the Khmer Rouge. One of the biggest killing fields is just outside of Phnom Penh, Choeung Ek. More than 17,000 innocent people were brutally massacred there -and we were to walk around the fields to try to gain a small understanding of the horror of those four years.

A heaviness descended over all of us right from the start as we had to walk past beggars, all missing limbs, to get to the entrance gate. I had a lump in my throat from that moment; it hit me that we had just made the journey that 17,000 people made to their death less than forty years ago. Did they know their fate? Or did they clutch to the lies they were force fed, too hungry, too tired and too frightened to consider the reality.

Victims were brought here by the truck load, up to 300 in a day, where they were bound and forced to kneel down in front of one of the mass graves, already seething with rotting corpses, which will have been sprayed with DDT to disguise the smell from anyone passing by.

As we walked around, we listened to the voices of real survivors of the Pol Pot regime via an audio guide, showing us the many mass graves that were discovered here (some of which were purging teeth and bones), the piles of clothing that emerge every year when the river levels drop, and, worst of all, the tree against which the children were smashed to death in front of their mothers.

Pol Pot did not want to waste money on bullets, so the common method of killing was beating to the back of the head with hammers, axe handles and bamboo sticks for adults, while children were either beaten against a tree or thrown in the air and speared on a bayonet. They even used the leaves of a razor-sharp palm tree to cut throats of certain victims, and many were beheaded completely. We walked around the site in stunned silence, everyone's emotions as tangible as the bones and clothes before us.

After paying a visit to the commemorative stupa, filled with over 5,000 skulls of victims, we then made the reverse journey back to the city, something the 17,000 innocent people were never lucky enough to do.

We headed to where the atrocities began: S-21, formally a public school in the centre of the city, but transformed immediately by the Khmer Rouge into a high security prison where detainees, thought to be enemies, were systematically photographed, interrogated, tortured, and eventually sentenced for execution. Enemies included professionals, monks and anyone who were considered a threat to the ultra-paranoid regime - all forced to sign a false confession for crimes they didn't commit.

In the cells they were shackled together on the ground without any kind of bedding or mats underneath them. Once here you were not allowed to talk or make any noise. Doing so would result in lashes or electric shocks. If you needed to adjust your position on the floor, you had to ask permission first, as doing so without permission would result in punishment.

Visiting S-21 was another sombre experience. Walls are lined with rows upon rows of photographs. Old men, pregnant women, and small children - the faces of the dead whose eyes bore into you. Cabinets are filled with skulls, and cells still have rusting devices of torture within them.

The most harrowing image of the all was an old exercise structure in the school's playground. It had been turned into a torture device where prisoners were strung up, their wrists tied behind their backs, and were dunked in huge tubs of water and suspended in mid air at intervals until they gave the name of other 'enemies', probably their own family and close friends.

Out of an estimated 17,000 people imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, there were only seven known survivors.

I don't think I can get across the extent of what we saw that day in words. And I was frustrated that Europe or America didn't step in to prevent the four year mass genocide. It was the Vietnamese, in the end, who saved thousands.

One of the other things I can't get my head around is that even though this was all discovered in 1980, only now, in 2011, are the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders standing trial in the hands of the UN. In fact, the UN continued to recognise Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge as the leaders of Cambodia until 1997. Justice still hasn't been served for the millions who suffered and died in the hands of evil, and his army.

The effects the Khmer Rouge rule can be still observed in the population today. Families are still struggling to re-stabilise themselves after losing a high proportion of their male members, and jobs are still a hot commodity in a country where many of the cities were completely destroyed. The lack of jobs is not the only factor affecting the recovery of Cambodia's economy, another debilitating factor is the complete lack of education received by children growing up during and shortly after the Khmer Rouge period. What's more, physical disabilities caused by torture, land mines, and chronic hunger still affect many people today.

As a result, Cambodia is still one of Asia's poorest countries. But rather than viewing the country with pity (despite being reduced to tears at times during our time there), I'm in awe of how they have recovered from the scars caused by the Khmer Rouge.

Years of suffering have crippled the country, but they show so much pride in what they do have: the greatness of Angkor, incredible natural beauty and kind, forgiving hearts. It was the incredible people that really made our time in Cambodia.

Ho Chi, Củ Chi, KFC, Minh

The last stop on our Vietnam trail was the city of Ho Chi Minh.

Saigon, as it was formerly (and still is unofficially) known, is just as crazy, chaotic and thrill-riding as you'd expect it to be, and a fitting way to end our journey through this often intense, and at times insane, country.

Saigon is a city full of dizzying contrasts: hawkers in conical hats walking under huge, flashing billboards; ropey motorbikes roaring through the streets next to perfectly polished Hummers; timeless alleys, lined with ramshackle stalls selling spices and pans, leading to designer malls and gourmet restaurants. Yet, everyone is as much a part of this living organism as the next, adding their own energy and eclecticism to the city's urban mosaic.

Reminders of what the city and its people went through, just one generation ago, are in the tourist trappings (the museums and the Củ Chi tunnels) but today, propaganda about the Vietnam war (or, to the Vietnamese, the American war) is now only contained in the faux-vintage poster shops and group tours led by grinning guides. The American outlets of KFC and Adidas hammered home that point.

While there, we took part in the touristy propaganda - silently looking at horrific images from the war and making our way through a stifling section of the Củ Chi tunnels, an immense network of underground tunnels used by the Vietnamese (in Western history books, known as the Viet Cong guerillas) to bewilder and defeat the Americans.

At Củ Chi, we took a tour through the jungle where a lot of the Vietnam war was fought, and where a great deal of soldiers, on both sides, lost their lives. We circumnavigated bomb craters and booby traps of all kinds that were made by the communist soldiers to capture, kill or maim American fighters when on the ground. I squeezed myself into one hiding hole - not advisable if you are even a little bit claustrophobic, or "big-boned" for that matter.

The tunnels, which have been widened and reinforced for tourists in parts (not that you would know as they are so small and cramped), go deeper into the earth and the Viet Cong and civilians alike lived under there to avoid being shot or captured. We shuffled along inside, our backs bent right over

as we made our way along in the dark and dirt. We bailed out early (you can walk 100 metres) and it was a relief to see sunlight again, I can tell you!

It must have been a terrifying life, living underground, only emerging to shoot at the enemy. So many lives were lost here and the deafening sound of the theme park style

shooting range was quite unsettling.

Another sobering day arrived when I rounded a street corner, looking for postcards, and stopped in my tracks because I was aware that there was something strange with the formation of people ahead of me. A kind traveller approached me and said "if you don't want to be depressed, don't come down here." I looked ahead and could see why everyone had stopped in their tracks. A Vietnamese man, surrounded by a huge pool of blood that was spreading onto the grey tarmac, was writhing around in the road. He had slit his throat and was slowly dying in the centre of a busy street. Stunned, and feeling wobbly, I decided to turn on my heal and leg it back the way I came.

But the image stuck with me all day and I was left wondering what would drive a person to do that so spontaneously and so publicly. That evening, we asked a local guy while sat drinking bia hơi if he knew what had happened. He said, looking very solemn, "love, I can't think of

another reason but love."

Despite their often hard exterior, the Vietnamese are a bunch of hopeless romantics after all. And we left on this note, happy we had experienced this beautiful, unruly country with its formidable, resilient and occasionally charming people, yet glad to be moving on to Cambodia for our next adventure.

Vroom vroom Vietnam!

We spent the next week exploring Đà Lạt (or Dalat), in the central highlands, and then Mũi Né on the south coast by the best transport available in Vietnam: motorbike (sorry mum!).

Motorbikes have surely surpassed walking as the most-used form of transport in Vietnam. Everywhere you go there are people cleaning, repairing, and retooling them; hundreds of shops in each city and town sell helmets, fake designer-print seats and other bike 'bling'.

We wanted a piece of the action.

After another 'throw your hands in the air and declare"only-in-Asia!"' bus journey (involving a group of us being left stranded in the middle of the night for hours and fisticuffs, well almost, with the tour company), we rolled into Dalat.

Dalat, a cool, mountain town where there are no straight streets and no street signs...and no maps. It’s got good French credentials though: for years the French used Dalat as their vacation grounds, building giant European villas up in the hills. Even now, colourful european architecture permeates the place, making it look less like Vietnam and more of a run-down, Alps mountain town. While the town wasn't the lush, green haven we had hoped for, the surrounding fields are home to strawberry, dragonfruit and flower farms and beyond that are crop-covered hills, rolling into the distance.

At night, the streets in the centre of town come alive with street markets selling pretty much everything from food, clothes ('90s throwbacks, mostly), jewellery and more. With a temperate climate, there are stalls heaving with all kinds of fresh, leafy vegetables - glorious vegetables! What I wouldn't give for a good lettuce! (£1.5o, it turned out, that evening in a salad). People yelling and vending to the bitter end made for a colourful circus well into the night.

I'm getting side-tracked, back to the motorbikes. Vietnam was made for travel by motorbike, and the twists and turns of the verdantm central highlands offered coffee plantations, breathtaking vistas, sprinklings of minority villages and a healthy serving of fresh air. The roads were fairly clear and wide but just crazy enough to provide the occasional spike of adrenaline and make me grip onto Med just a little tighter.

We cruised through the mountain passes, surrounded by shades of green as far as the eye can see, trying to ask villagers for directions, followed by endless U-turns and head-scratching and occasional soakings by the monsoon rains.

This was pure freedom and euphoria! Only rudely interrupted, momentarily, by pot holes that made my bum that bit number.

We visited the Prenn and Datanla waterfalls, which cater for Asian tourists and honeymooners, because for Westerners it is surely cheesier than a packet of Wotsits (although we spoke to some who seemed to love them). The waterfalls are nothing short of beautiful, or at least they were 20 years earlier, but the carnival stalls, cable cars, plastic menagerie, ostrich rides and man in a monkey warrior suit made this something more

akin to a tacky theme park than a natural beauty spot. We were perplexed and hurried back to our motorbike, escaping the gaggles of photo-posing, Chinese tourists.

Still, Dalat was a free-wheeling snapshot of the highlands of Vietnam and a nice heat reprieve before our next destination: Mũi Né, which was all sizzling beaches, slapping on suncream and sand dunes.

Mũi Né is a jumbled mix of quiet,fishing village and lazy beach town. As we strolled along the thin, long stretch of beach on our first day, we watched fisherman pulling nets, pushing paddles through the water in round boats and shouting back and forth to each other.

After a few days of languishing by the beach, we teamed up with our new friends, Aoife and Mark, and rented motorbikes. We enjoyed a breezy day on the road: almost conned by a cheeky monk at a long-lost monastery, biking to sand dunes and canyons, that had clearly grown legs and moved since the map was printed, sand sledding with entrepreneurial little kids who would make Lord Alan Sugar proud (as much for their potty mouths as for their money-making schemes), breathing in the pungent pong of shrimps that are dried in there billions at the side of the road to make Mũi Né's famous fish sauce, swimming in the sea on a local beach while in fear of getting robbed, stocking up on beer

during Happy Hour(s) and keeping them in the fridge behind the bar, tucking in with our fingers to platefuls of fresh seafood, and nursing bad sunburn (not mine, for I'm still obsessed with the factor 30).

So, in summary, motorbiking in Vietnam is an incredible experience and can be done safely, it's the odd, hoodwinking monk and Alan Sugar's scruffy, pint-sized protégés that you need to watch out for!