Well, it's never too early.....is it?

There's no two ways about it, monsoon season is definitely here. Woody's even been sporting a rather fetching see-through yellow poncho, although photographic evidence to support this claim has been destroyed. My word against hers. At times the rain has been oppressive, so insistent. So piss-istent as the joke goes. It's a blanketing rain that is in so many ways just like stepping into a hot power-shower, made all the more exhilarating by having all our kit in tow - and the flip-flops, God's sake the flippin' flip-flops. Shut up about the flip-flops. Within miliseconds a layer of water becomes trapped between the sole of the foot and the surface of the 'flop. Combine this with the layer of water between the pavement and the sole of the 'flop and you get an exciting double-aquaplaning action which makes walking less than easy. It makes running for a bus while jumping puddles with a twenty kilo rucksack a miracle to rival Jesus walking on water.

We escaped mainland Thailand and headed for our own wee slice of island bliss on Koh Payam, a quiet little island in the Andaman Sea. We found ourselves a small bamboo hut and set up camp there for a few days. The joys of having an outdoor bathroom with no roof during monsoon season. In a way Koh Payam is like Neverneverland (think Peter Pan not Michael Jackson). In Neverneverland you have the indians in one area of the island, pirates in another and Pan and his lost boys in another. Here there are the monks to the North, sea gypsies to the South and a small colony of ex-pats by the pier. Walking along the vast beaches we had the whole space to ourselves, save for the wild dogs who'll follow along just for something to do. They must just enjoy the company, maybe the feeling of 'being walked' - desperate for attention are those wee tingies. The storms come in quick and fast on the island but we had a little makeshift porch so we could sit and watch the different characters going about their days. The orange-robed monks wake up at about 4am (funnily enough we missed that bit) and start their chanting. We could hear it from our hut, melodic and haunting but pretty nice mixed in with the crashing of the waves. A bell rings at 11am which drives the dogs mental and signals the monks for their meal. Or as I'd call it - Elevenses. Forget about a SodaStream and a pack of Golden Wonder - they have the full work up, they have to do all their eating by midday, 'else Buddha doesn't like it. Bellies full, they do a bit of praying, watch a bit of telly and smoke their religious little lungs out before early to bed to repeat the process the next morning. The sea gypsies have the beach in the southeast and seem to spend their days fishing and generally dicking about on boats - as you'd fully expect a sea gypsy to do. And then there's the ex-pat community. Not extensive, but we met a few old chaps who evidently spend their days in paradise boozing it up to the max, and why not? I think it takes a 'special' kind of person to be able to completely up sticks and move permanently to an island with a population of about 80, but then when you see how utterly relaxed and not-bothered-about-anyfink these old dogs are you can definitely see the benefits. There was the one chap, Eliot. Imagine if Kaa, the slightly effeminate snake from 'The Jungle Book' had a lovechild with Keith Richards, that's what Eliot looked like. He waxed lyrical about the differences between island life and the UK: "Yessss, it's beautiful here. Well, I wouldn't ssssay Edinburgh's pret-ty, but it's very.....hmm, what's the word..... aussss-tere". He's right about the first part though - beautiful island...

Back on the mainland we spent a couple of nights in tsunami-ravaged Khao Lak. The 2004 tsunami devastated the town, but the beach and the resorts seem to have got back on their feet pretty quicksmart. After a couple of days walking the immense beach we headed for an uncomfortable night in an empty Phuket airport with only our cheese sandwiches and each other for company before jetting off to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Four years ago, our very favourite small, attractive and accident-prone brunette photographer spent time in Cambodia and returned in 2010 to find it much changed. Woody worked at an orphanage down by the lakeside, spending her days laughing and playing with the orphans, and fell in love with the country and it's people. A disappointment, then, to find out that this entire area of Phnom Penh has been transformed into a tourist hotspot full of guesthouses and pubs and that the project she so enjoyed no longer exists (at least not in it's past form - tuktuk drivers now offer trips to orphanages as 'tourist attractions'). The Cambodian people, though, still remain as friendly and warm as she remembered. Arriving in the Cambodian capital was an instant bombardment, an assault on the senses. The city is chaotic, and navigating it is like playing the most nerve-racking level of the old computer game 'Frogger'. Motorbikes, tuktuks and bicycles zip around with a seemingly 'by any means neccessary' attitude - on the pavements, on the wrong side of the road, anything goes. Crossing the road demands commitment - just keep going and they'll avoid us, just keep going and they'll avoid us. So far it's worked - we just keep going, and they avoid us. There must be a cool, Cambodian way to do it, but we've yet to discover their secret as far as road crossing is concerned. For all the chaos, we felt instantly charmed by Cambodia. The Khmer people are among the smiliest, most tactile people we've encountered on our travels, and you pick up that energy so quickly. Of course the country (and especially Phnom Penh) is steeped in a bloody history of torture, cruelty and execution from the seventies. At times while padding around the streets there's this haunting feeling. Anyone over the age of thirty survived the brutal regime of the Khmer Rouge, and this feeling crops up when you see someone over the age of fifty: "What did you do? What was your part to play in all of it?" They either survived, or commited the atrocities that are documented at Tuol Sleng - the S21 Prison, and Choeung Ek Killing Fields. We walked through the blood-stained hallways and cells of the prison, a sombre and spooky place, relatively untouched since it was abandoned in 1979. Ghostly mugshots of former inmates stare at visitors and it's an unsettling experience. Equally disturbing is the skull-filled tower at the Killing Fields, which stands as a memorial to the lost souls. Walking between the mass graves even now scraps of prisoner's clothing and even bones are exposed as the monsoon rains hammer down and wash away the earth. So it's a city of opposites really: everywhere you look there's this movement, activity, life going on. At the same time there's the undercurrent of brutality and death. Pretty heavy going, all in all...

So far one of the things that has proved to be really interesting about Cambodia are the various abandoned buildings which have just been left to gather dust all over the country. In Kampot we trekked through the jungle and ascended the 1000-odd metre Bokor Hill to visit the Black Palace. It's an old casino and ghost town from the twenties which was abandoned by the French when Khmer Rouge forces stormed the area in the 1975. Supposedly haunted by the ghosts of unsuccessful gamblers who threw themselves from the cliffs in despair, it's a place straight from a horror film, or a Steven King novel. Dingy corridors with an inch of rainwater which has leaked in from the crumbling roof, dark rooms with smashed up bathrooms and wind howling through the window frames. If I was a junkie, I think it would be exactly where I'd want to shoot up. It's perfect. The surrounding mist adds a ghostly feel, but the pink and orange moss which covers the building from entrance to the the top balcony makes it look like it was invaded by aliens - the best place to gamble in all Cambodia. In Battambang there is a deserted railway station and repair sheds, as well as an old Pepsi bottling plant just out of town, abandoned some thirty-odd years ago. Peering through the windows there are shelves and shelves of the old-school Pepsi bottles (the ones that say PepsiCola in swirly red letters) and some old uniforms hanging up. The good thing about the monsoon season is that there are less tourists, so these little gems almost appear to exist for us to enjoy alone, at our leisure.

The streets of Battambang were also where a group of old men picked up the "Friendliest Cambodians of the Day" award, for their generosity in providing us some culinary delight - a bag of crickets no less. They must have seen the glint in Woody's eye as she checked out their bag of crunchy snacks, and were quick to offer up a sample. Probably half expecting us to politely turn down the offer, the old chaps were delighted to see us gamely delve into the bag and munch the heads off these plasticky wee creatures. Not bad - tastes like chicken... "You one more, you like? You like?" There's only one way to reply to that, in the style of English soft rockers 10cc -

"I don't like cricket.................. I love it"