Some of the most spectacular sights are to be found away from the bigger temples at Ta Prohm where over several hundred years since being built, nature has gradually reclaimed her land by slowly destroying man’s stone structures - natures revenge perhaps? Giant tree routes engulf vast stone structures, weakening and tumbling the blockwork to the ground. Not even Lara Croft achieved that during the opening sequences to the movie Tomb Raider, shot here back in the nineties.

Each of our three days at Angkor bought very different experiences.

Day One: Lovely long cycle ride to the outer temples - very quiet on the road and hardly any other people around the temples which made for relaxed wandering around.

Day Two: A peaceful and majestic sunrise sat on the steps looking out over the vast bathing lake at Sras Srang and getting ‘picked up’ by an elderly guide at Ta Prohm and when prompted offering him 10,000R note for his tour services, hearing him politely ask for “one more please.”

Day Three: Angkor Wat and The Bayon, which lived up to their hype, but only just due to the hordes of people - bus load after bus load all armed with camera’s, lenses and often with scant regard for the respectful dress code when tramping around the temples.

Just need to make mention a couple of things about the town of Siem Reap, where the Angkor Wat temple complex is located. We were fortunate to see a billboard advertising the work of the legendary Dr. Beat Richter, who each weeks puts on a free Cello concert to highlight the Children’s Hospital charity he has fronted for several years. His passion for bringing free medical treatment to every child in Cambodia inspired us not just to make a financial donation, we made time the following day to go to his hospital and donate a pint of blood - essential to the treatment of Dengue fever.

The second observation about Siem Reap is the slightly uneasy night out we had on day two of our temple tour. After the historical splendor of Angkor and surrounding poverty of Cambodians (more prominent in our minds following DR Richter’s Cello concert) nothing prepared us for the neon indulgence of the ‘Costa del Sol’ tourist town centre of Siem Reap where rich westerners ate, drank and indulged and the only Cambodians in evidence were waiting staff. In harked back to the Colonial era and left us feeling uncomfortable and and slightly depressed at how little society has moved on, leaving us awkward at playing our part in the ‘show’…