After a good night’s sleep, we spent our first day in Dubai at the Wild Wadi Water Park. In Dubai the only way to get anywhere is by taxi – thankfully they are fast and cheap and very plentiful. The water park was good fun, although a little smaller than I had expected and the queue for the long drop slide was very tiresome – why on Earth is there only one slide from the top of the tower?! Every other water park I have seen has had three or four in parallel.

We had a great time though and enjoyed the views of the iconic Burl Al Arab off the coast. The wave pool was great fun too, and it was nice to just be relaxing and enjoying ourselves for one last week.

The taxi drive back to the hotel took us close to the foot of the Burj Dubai, the insane 800m sky scraper that currently holds the title of tallest building in the world. It really is a spectacle – this hazy photograph at least shows how it compares to the other skyscrapers in the city.

We didn’t manage much else – winding down and relaxing during our final week of holiday!

Once again, we started our day at Toast Box before heading to the SMRT for the station closest to the Zoo. Here we got on a private bus that offered free transit when on purchase of a zoo entrance ticket – unfortunately that meant a not inconsiderable wait for a few more people to fill the bus. The wait was so long that at least it got everyone on the little bus chatting – although if we went again we would look at quicker options.

Singapore Zoo really is a fantastic place – huge area and interesting habitats and animals. Only the cages for a few big cats were disappointing – clearly too small for the poor things and obviously older than the rest of the park. There were a few eating options in the park, but as we were both suffering from slightly dodgy stomachs, we simply had some crisps! We had thought it was yesterdays laksa experience (’laksa’-tive, ho ho) but in retrospect it was probably the malaria pills we had to take for Cambodia.

Some of the highlights were the large baboon colony, the monkey feeding and the sea lion show. A great zoo and definitely deserving another visit some time. Sadly we had to leave at around 5pm to return to our hotel to collect our bags and head on to the airport. The transit system in Singapore is superb, clean and quick – although the zoo is some way from the SMRT station.

At the airport we had a fantastic Burger King mushroom double burger – so our stomachs couldn’t have been that bad… although Laura was still suffering a little.

Our flight was at 1155 and we were served a light, not particularly great meal which watching the light, not particularly great movie ‘National Treasure 2′. We both managed to get a little sleep, but not the most comfortable flight of our trip.

Our flight arrived at around 3am, so it was with some relief that we eventually collapsed into bed at the Dubai Ibis World Trade Centre. Even as the cheapest hotel in Dubai, this was one of the most expensive places we stayed and it was a definite step up from most of our accommodations during our two months away.

We started the day with a the Sun City Mall where we had breakfast at the fantastic Toast Box, a popular chain serving retro toast based snacks!  Laura when for peanut butter and I had French Toast, both lovingly sliced into perfectly equal peices and served with a boiled egg and a great cup of tea.

We took the SMRT to the Orchard stop to take a look at the famed Orchard Road shopping strip.  Neither of us being shoppers, we had a hurried look around the Ngee Ann City Mall, and were most taken by the amazing food hall, where we had a tasty chocolate brownie – although given the other options I wish we had chosen better!

Back on the SMRT, we headed over to Chinatown.  Like every other Chinatown we have visited, this consists of tightly packed restaurants on cluttered streets with a distinctive odour…  Not very pleasant really and I don’t think we’ll be bothering with any other Chinatowns until we go to China itself!

We then took a walk around the far more snythetic and sanitized area of Clarke Quay where we decided to amuse ourselves with a drink in Hooters before looking for food.  We decided to find a ‘hawkers centre’ – a type of food market that seems to be popular in Singapore.  We went to the Lau Pa Sat centre which was packed with dozens of stalls selling all manner of bizarre Asian food.  We decided to embrace the strange and Laura had a bowl of Singapore Laksa and I had a sweet potato milkshake.

Both of these were poor choices.  The spicy soup of Laksa was the hottest thing I have ever eaten, the firey sting of the thick, red, broth only broken by rubbery, unidentified meats or vegetables.  And to wash it down, the sweet potato milkshake was pretty much as you would imagine.  Sweet potato mixed with milk.  Yikes.

We left almost all of the soup and decided to return to the sweet potato stall to get some sweet potato chips – which were, thankfully, very tasty!

We headed back to the hotel for a rest before going back into town and the Chjimes complex for dinner.  This is an old monastry and church converted into shops and restaurants – “Mmmmmm, sacrilicious!”.  A beautiful spot, but with mostly unimpressive menus, we eventually grabbed a pizza and fantastic chicken wings at a place on a lowered courtyard in the centre of the complex.  Good food, but very expensive – I’m sure we could do better in Singapore!

We were up early for breakfast – Laura had a delicious bowl of Pho, a chicken noodle soup, while I was more traditional with my muesli. We decided to spend the brief time we had left in Siem Reap at the Angkor Wat ruins, wanting to enjoy it at our own pace and get a couple of pictures with a bit of blue sky in them.

Although it was a rush, we really enjoyed our time without the guide – again I have to advise anyone going there not to bother with a guide!

After about an hour at the ruins we had to rush back to the hotel to shower and pack for the flight and then checked out and took the tuk tuk to the airport. Sadly we were immediately told that our flight would be delayed three hours – although they did give us a food voucher! In the end a few rounds of Scrabble and a bit of internet access saw us through the hours very quickly.

The flight was fine and on arriving in Singapore we hopped on the SMRT to Bugis and made a short walk to the New 7th Storey Hotel. We dumped our bags and headed to Clarke Quay in search of food – after much indecision we decided we needed a big burger and headed to Billy Bomber’s – perfect after a few days of Asian food.

We then took a walk along Boat Quay and over a huge bridge that looked over some impressive modern architecture and the Singapore Big Wheel. Our route home also took us by Raffles and some other historic buildings – a really pleasant city.

We started the day with muesli from the restaurant – and then headed out at 7:30am for the long drive to Banteay Srei. It is a long way to travel in a tuk tuk, but the areas outside of the town are fascinating and the roads are quiet.

Banteay Srei is famous for the intricacy of the temple carvings and we spent some time wandering through the small ruins. It was an incredibly hot day and the ruins were very busy, so we were quite relieved to get back on the tuk tuk and get some air flowing.

The rest of the day was spent around various temples – Pre Rup, Banteay Samre, East Mebon, Ta Som, Preah Khan and Banteay Kdei. All very interesting, but two days is plenty for the casual visitor as we were decidedly ‘templed out’ by the end of the day.

We had our evening meal at the Kouron II restaurant – a huge hall with an all you can eat buffet and a Khmer dance show. The food was passable, but still not a patch on the meal we had on the first day. The jelly desserts were quite an acquired taste…

The dancing was very good though, and it was a nice way to end our visit.

Today, as part of our package with The Villa, we were accompanied by a guide, Sum, to the temples. Siem Reap has plenty of English speaking guides available, but we were not impressed by the first thing he said – “Sorry, I was out late last night and I probably smell” . He then spoke mostly through his hand for the duration of the tour.

To be honest, his tour was pretty poor. We overheard another guide and they seemed to had a similar lack of information. It seems from reading books about the place, there isn’t much to say… so I would strongly recommend that other visitors simply avoid having a guide. There isn’t much information and it only felt more awkward, and we were unable to explore ourselves – far better to go at your own pace.

However, the presence of the tour guide could not detract from what a truly spectacular place Angkor Wat is. We were both surprised at how huge it was – and how Angkor Wat was merely one temple of hundreds throughout the jungle. On our tour we took in Angkor Thom, Bayon, the Elephant Terrace and many others. Ta Phrom – the ‘Tomb Raider’ temple – was particularly beautiful – huge roots reclaiming the temple into the jungle.

We stopped for lunch provided by the hotel – tasty sandwiches, although we had added a few things from the mini bar to make it a bit more substantial.

We ate in the Villa restaurant that night – I had the all-you-can-eat BBQ buffet which was quit pleasant. At the time I suspected it of giving me food poisoning, but we eventually decided it was just the malaria pills. Laura had a chicken amok, but it was not as good as our food at the Amok restaurant itself.

So up to bed to play Scrabble and even watched a movie before bed – Music And Lyrics an enjoyable enough rom-com.

We left the hotel at 7am and had carrot cake and coffee for breakfast at a cafe in the airport – we tried to retain some appetite for the flight, and thankfully a delicious selection of omelette and fish noodles were served on the Silk Air flight.

Siem Reap airport is a lovely spot and the immigration and customs process was very speedy. We proceeded through the terminal straight to met Mr. Ngin, our tuk-tuk driver for the next few days. He whizzed us through town to The Villa hotel – it was a pretty unnerving ride, with no apparent traffic rules and near misses a-plenty.

On arrival a lovely local girl took us through our itinerary and provided us a with a complementary drink. The room itself was huge, with two double beds and a large en-suite. We relaxed there for a while before Mr. Ngin picked us up and ran us round to the Artisans Centre.

Here we saw dozens of young underprivileged or disabled people working on a variety of arts – carving stone, painting and weaving. The shop was very reasonable priced with excellent quality of work – although we just picked up a couple of folded paper souvenirs for our Christmas tree.

We decided to walk back to The Villa, through the old market – countless stalls of silk and paintings etc, although nothing particularly appealing. The market then became endless food stalls – the smell and cleanliness was so poor that it really was quite horrifying…

We hurried through and went on to a nearby restaurant, Amok – somehow retaining an appetite. In contrast to the market, this was a light and airy place and the food was delicious and insanely cheap at around £3 for the main course. We had a banana leaf salad, a fish amok, fried pork mince ‘lap’ and Khmer noodles. Only the noodles (which were similar to tagliatelle) were disappointing.

We continued wandering back to the hotel through the busy and often smelly streets – dumping rubbish on to the streets just seems to be they way things are done here. Back at the hotel we picked up a small picnic as part of our package.

Unfortunately, it was a cloudy evening, so with no sunset to enjoy, the tuk tuk took us to a temple in the middle of a lake – sadly this was a very underwhelming site. Some rubble peeking out of a large, half dry, huge square ditch. The lack of water meant that it was muddy and the sight of homeless dogs and local children playing in it rather tempered the pleasure of the food.

By perfect chance, the wine was from Margaret River, so we asked the tuk tuk driver to return us to The Villa where we drank it whilst playing Scrabble. Much better.

We got up fairly early and got everything packed, leaving our tent and camping gear with Sarah to find a use for them! We drive back down into Perth for breakfast at Zamia, the cafe in the heart of King’s Park where Sarah and David both work.

After a good feed, we said our farewells and took a wander around the park. We walked up the DNA tower, took a few photographs of Perth, and then took to the roads for one last time and made our way to the airport.

We were flying direct to Singapore with Singapore Airlines and were very impressed by the food (a nice beef curry) and drink (lovely Singapore Sling), and enjoyed Juno while we ate. Also watched the nonsense of Hitman…

Our onward flight to Cambodia was not until the following morning, so we had booked into the Transit Hotel overnight. The hotel is comfortable, like a basic Travelodge, and is airside – perfect for long transfers. We almost didn’t want to go to bed – Singapore airport is a fantastic place; free PS3 and Xbox 360 stands, free internet, sunflower garden and a free cinema (although the cinema in our terminal was being refurbished).

We used the free internet to transfer some money around – and by the time we had done this we were tired and grumpy and glad to have a bed to go to. It was a bit cold in the room, so a call for more blankets was required and we then slept pretty well.

We started the day at a lovely bakery in Joondalup, Sugar and Spice. I had a lovely caramel slice and we both had a coffee. We then headed inland to the Swan Valley, a large wine region to the east of Perth. We were running a bit low on petrol and had a bit of a job finding a pump, and then had a little trouble finding the tourist information – that’s what happens when we you don’t plan your visit and have forgotten your guide book!

Anyway, we planned a nice route around the the area, taking in the Houghton Winery, Sitella, Talijancich, Feral Beers (where we shared a chorizo platter), a nougat factory (rubbish!) and then Jane Brook for a lovely cheese and pate platter.

We headed back to Joondalup and tidied out the car, ready to hand back the next day. We then all went back into Perth in Sarah’s car to meet friends in Leederville – including Tom’s brother David, another former Dundonald resident. We ate at a nice Italian, pizza and pasta all round – great craic.

We drove into the upmarket Subiaco district for breakfast – unfortunately everything was closed. Surprising, even though it Sunday… So for the third day we ended up in our third branch of Dome. Food was grand okay though.

Unsure what to do in Perth, we headed to the Museum of Western Australia. Not being big museum folk, we were actually really impressed at information and exhibits available – insects, animals, minerals, colonisation Western Australia, Aboriginal history. All very interesting and worth a few hours.

We then checked out the official city beach before driving up the ‘Sunset Drive’ along the coast of the Indian Ocean – although sadly it wasn’t sunset.

Arriving back in Joondalup, Sarah took us to the Joondalup bird park to feed the parrots and galahs. They didn’t care for the nuts we had brought, but luckily a prior family had been over generous so we scavenged a few handfuls and were able to get the birds interested.

We drove back to Sarah’s house and she prepped us a beautiful fresh curry before we headed to bed fairly early.