Vietnam has the “Dong” – not only a fairly amusing name, but a valuation of about 30,000 to £1 GBP. This means that you’re trading in the millions for some things, and you have no ability to understand what you’re paying. It’s hard enough to think in a new currency without having to calculate that many digits. Never mind having to say “dong” all the time. So I was quite glad to get rid of it after being used to Thai Baht, and was happy to learn that in Cambodia pretty much the official currency in US dollars. You use dollars absolutely everywhere, and everything is marked in dollars. Easy peasy. But wait – they give you your change back in RIEL, which is the actual Cambodian currency. What kind of retardation is this?! You have to now calculate in three separate currencies, and you end up with some dollars, and some of this Cambodian monopoly money, with less than no idea how to combine the two to pay for things. I find it quite ironic that the currency is called riel (real) to be honest, I felt like I was paying with old bus tickets.

Rant over. **Breathe**

So Vietnam, cool weather compared to Thailand, smilier people, and the finest looking women in Asia, without a doubt. Cambodia, what have you got for me?

As I was running out of time on my travels after having arsed around in Koh Tao for far longer than I had anticipated, I decided to take in the highlights of Cambodia: Siem Reap, Sihanouville and Phnom Penh. The ancient city with the eight wonder of the world – Angkor Wat, the beach and islands, and the capital city. That’s a lotta Cambodian flavour… And I’ll be honest, after coming from Thailand and Vietnam, my enchantment with Cambodia was not so strong. Everything was a really good experience, and a great part of my travels, but I kind of feel like the food – good but not AS good as Thailand. The women – hot but not AS hot. The city – interesting but not AS much to do. The beach – nice but not AS nice. And for the poorest country in Asia, it surprised me that it was the most expensive by far. It sounds like I’m complaining, but I’m not – it’s been yet again a pretty incredible week…

So I began once again alone in Siem Reap, having left my Vietnam travel buddy in Hanoi. Siem Reap is a town famous because of the Angkor Wat temple, which was constructed around the 12^th century as a devotion to the Hindu god Vishnu. It’s an absolutely incredible ancient city, the 8^th wonder – and it’s not hard to see why… It’s on par with Macchu Picchu in terms of how epic the place is, but also how overrun with people it now is. So having met my new travel buddies – a couple of Dutch guys who are of the similar “sightsee hard drink harder” mentality as me – we set off for the day’s excursion and absolutely nailed it. Having originally contemplated doing the 3 day Angkor trip, I’m so glad I didn’t – it’s amazing but after a day it was all just rocks and some more rocks, to be perfectly honest. Going back again would have just devalued it for me.

So, after being locked in a toilet by a Cambodian kid on another boat party through the floating village, watching someone slip over in the hostel dorm bathroom in what turned out to be someone else’s sperm (a heated conversation in the dorm while I was sleeping clarified that for me – the disgusting part of living in dorms) and a couple of absolutely mental nights out which I won’t/can’t document, I made my way over to Sihanoukville. Now this place, supposed to be the nicest place in Cambodia for the seaside, actually stunned me slightly. It was because the last beach I was on was the best beach I’d ever been to – Koh Tao – and by that comparison everything about Sihanoukville felt like Blackpool beach to me. Perhaps not a fair judgment on my part – but hey, a trip out to the islands to try my hand at fishing (I caught some seaweed), and lie on the beach was a good Tuesday…

Until I got robbed by a chicken. There are chickens EVERYWHERE on the island just wandering around – so when I fell asleep on the hammock on the beach, some random chicken must have wandered over, picked up my earphones and buggered off. I woke up to see a Cambodian person chasing this thing. I got them returned to me broken, was very clucked off at the chicken (sorry, couldn’t resist) – but in hindsight that’s probably karma for loving Nando’s so much. After these travels, being robbed by a chicken hasn’t raised an eyebrow, which is quite something in itself…

But no time to dither! On to the next one – Phnom Penh!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The capital city is a fascinating place, madly interesting, but incredibly depressing to sightsee. You see, like Vietnam, Cambodia has had everyone and their auntie’s dad’s hamster come to visit, settle, invade, conquer and influence, one after another. So you get a lot of underlying mashup of culture like Vietnam, but with one major difference: the Khmer Rouge. Now I had no understanding of Asian politics prior to this trip, but Cambodia has both fascinated and depressed me for the stories of the Khmer Rouge. During all the shit going on with the war in Vietnam, the Cambodian state was severely weakened. This was taken full advantage of by a deeply communist movement founded by a bloke called Pol Pot. This guy borne of these incredible idealistic Marxist themes, his Khmer Rouge were of the opinion that the working class democracy should be the self-sustenance for the nation, and that no hierarchy or education should exist. Of course, other than themselves.

This fanatical idea led to all schools being turned in to torture camps, and the slavery and murder of around 3 million Cambodian people, mostly only those who were educated, as it was the educated that needed to be wiped out to restore the level playing field and working class harvest and slavery that the Khmer Rouge sought. Kind of reminded me of the League of Shadows from the Batman mythology – a completely idealistic, and completely unrealistic approach to modern society… And when you realise that they tortured and raped women, and held babies by their feet and swung them at trees to kill them it sickens you ever so slightly. And then you come to realise that all of this happened in the 1970’s – less than 30 years ago. Not 1000 years ago as that sort of retarded behaviour might indicate.

Seeing the killing fields and the skulls and teeth of all these tortured people was a sad, sad thing – and so I needed to be cheered up, pronto. What better way than to meet a Cambodian tuk tuk driver at the hostel bar who calls himself Mr Bombastic, and round up a gang of people to do an authentic Cambodian bar crawl at local bars? This guy was absolutely loco – after drinking at some bars, he randomly goes to me “Hey Krish, you wanna pet a python”? That sounding like a perverted chat up line, I said “not even a little bit” – but after a democratic vote from the rest of the drunk people, he put us all in his tuk tuk (all 7 of us) and took us to an actual underground python zoo to pet some real pythons – and then back to the nightclub… Bit of a strange addition to a night out!

The Bangkok city view from the Baiyoke Sky Tower

Since that, it’s been non-stop; Bangkok was my final port, with one final night remaining. And what a night! We began by gathering a group from the hostel and enjoying a drink at the top of the tallest tower in Thailand with some unbelievable views, after which the hostel manager, a 65 year old fat American bloke, told us he was going to take us out on a pub crawl. Let’s just say that I’ve never seen that many boobies in 15 minutes in my life. I didn’t even realise that this unbelievably seedy road in Bangkok “Soi Cowboy” existed until then.

After realising where this night was headed, we removed ourselves pretty quick sharp from this “pub crawl”, and proceeded on to Khao San for buckets of Sang Som whisky, Chang beer, talking to every human and causing an unprecedented amount of debauchery. To end my time in South East Asia pretty much exactly how I started it – carnage in Bangkok – had a nice poetic feel to it. If that poem was about what you shouldn’t do in life. But then again, what you shouldn’t do in life is pretty much Bangkok in a nutshell.

South East Asia, what a magnificent part of the world. And now we up the ante slightly – next stop: New Zealand, to do more stuff you shouldn’t do in life – jump out of a plane over some glaciers. If I can cross a road in Bangkok and survive, jumping out of a plane will be a doddle, surely?