A YORKSHIREMAN'S TRAVEL GUIDE
Various locations, Cambodia
July/August 2026
First Thoughts
Cambodia was a trip I went on as an expedition leader for the company Camps International, taking an expedition group of twelve young people and two other adults to the other side of the world for four weeks.
I went into this trip with some doubts; when I had been younger, I had gone on a similar expedition with another company to Malaysian Borneo. This trip was the longest time I had ever spent abroad, and in many ways marked a significant milestone in my life. No pressure, then.
We took off from London Gatwick, the second-largest international airport in the UK and quite possibly the furthest English airport from my house, and landed at Phnom Penh, the capital city’s airport, with an itinerary of four week-long camps and two weekend city breaks in the country of Cambodia ahead of us.
Days One to Three
My trip began with a drive down to a friend’s house, close to London Gatwick. Nervous for my first-ever expedition leader job, I was set to meet my group in the entrance to Gatwick’s terminal three. I was full of anticipation and nervousness, struggling to get much sleep at all the night before, and met my team early, at about 6am. From there, I led them through the airport system, boarding our first flight at 10am to Singapore Airport. I was lucky enough to end up with a window seat on this journey, where I managed to get an incredible view of the Caucasus Mountain range and Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. After a short changeover in Singapore, we took a second, shorter flight on to Phnom Penh International Airport, the largest and oldest of Cambodia’s two international airports.
Once we arrived in country, we met our expedition team’s line manager Ann, and our in-country tour guide, Sarun, the latter of whom would accompany us wherever we needed to go for the next month. As it was still early in the day, we set out to explore Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s bustling capital city, making our first stop at The Russian Market, one of the city’s many busy market areas. I split up with the young people for a period of time, as Sarun gave us an hour to explore as we wished, and I was treated to an overwhelming amount of Cambodian culinary culture all at once; all sorts of food being prepared, including raw chickens hanging by a string and many different types of fish laid out on counters. The smell was quite something, very different to what you would experience back in the UK.
Afterwards, we checked into the Onra Hotel, a four-star hotel with a swimming pool on the roof, before taking a much-needed enforced nap. We then headed from there out again into the city, exploring the Wat Phnom Buddhist Temple, a significant temple in the city centre, built on a small mound just outside the city’s central Night Market. I found the temple impressive, a place of tranquillity, but certainly not as large as most Christian churches. The group then headed to a local restaurant called the Paparazzi Bar & Kitchen, where we had dinner, before heading back to the hotel for a much-needed early night.
In the morning, Sarun led us out of the hotel, and we walked on foot to one of the most harrowing parts of the expedition, a half-day at S21, the Cambodian radical group Khmer Rouge’s main torture centre. The building looked innocent enough from the outside, and we were told this was intentional, as it had been a school, and locals believed that it still was during its use as a torture centre. There we met a survivor of the Khmer Rouge’s torture, an elderly man called Chum Mey. After this, we went out to Choeung Ek, one of the country’s many killing fields, which was found just outside of Phnom Penh. This was another harrowing experience, but among it I found the most startling part to be the Killing Tree, a large tree which Khmer Rouge soldiers would break babies’ skulls against.
These first two days really gave us an idea of how Cambodia’s recent history has affected the country – both literally and figuratively, a world apart from what we were used to. During their reign between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge killed between a quarter and a third of the population of the country. As Sarun said to the expedition group, “How many old people have you seen while you’ve been here?” We ended the second day in Phnom Penh with a visit to the night market, and we had another relatively early night before our departure for our first project camp in the morning.
Images:
- Top left: Overhead shot of Baku, Azerbaijan
- Top right: Myself outside of the Wat Phnom Buddhist Temple
- Bottom left: The Killing Tree in Choeung Ek
- Bottom right: Squid on a stick at the Phnom Penh Night Market
Days Four to Nine
Our first project camp was at a place called Camp Sok San, 250 kilometres from our hotel in Phnom Penh. We headed north on the coach, and I spent a lot of time checking the distance on my Google Maps app. Along the way, we stopped at a fair few service stations, including one where my assistant leader picked up ‘fried tarantula’ to eat from a market stall – it was covered in batter, and I’d be surprised if it had tasted of anything at all. On our way, we stopped at a beautiful restaurant called Aharothan Ptas Kraub, and I had my first view of rural Cambodia. Amongst the well-maintained gardens at the back of the restaurant, we managed to find bright-green beetles and small geckos that you would not get at home.
We moved on to our first camp, Sok San, where we were greeted by our first camp manager, Chan, an extremely happy and relaxed man who introduced himself as “Chan, like Jackie Chan”. I told him I was “Ali, like Muhammad Ali”. We were shown around the site, which up until COVID-19 had been a restaurant, and still looked very much like a restaurant, albeit a closed-down one. The children slept in tented dorms inside the main building, whilst the adults each got a straw hut with a tall tent inside of it. There were a couple of other buildings outside, but apart from that, the next nearest civilisation was two villages, both a couple of kilometres to the east and west of the site.
Our first day on the project was in the village to the west of the site, Sanvat. On the nearest edge of Sanvat, we stopped at a large home and got to work over the next two days, building a toilet, with the team digging holes, mixing cement and laying bricks, to eventually make a two-part squatting toilet. Whilst walking to and from the worksite, I noticed that almost all the buildings were on stilts, which Chan informed me was due to seasonal flooding, but also provided extra storage space for the families to keep animals or vehicles outside of their main house. After our first of the two days, the locals provided us with a trip around Sanvat on a pair of Kuyon, a common Cambodian transport method which has replaced ox carts in rural areas in the last few years – basically a tractor engine with wheels, controlled by two long handles, and often pulling a wooden cart to transport goods or people behind it.
As this first project went on, we began to experience Cambodia’s climate more, and learnt we were in the country’s rainy season, as it would rain very heavily almost every night, and often there was thunder and lightning; however, this only seemed to occur at night. Once we had finished the toilets, we spent a couple of days helping at a school in the village to the left, Kraya, where we laid down tiles to fill the school’s yard, and the children taught English to the primary school children. On our final day at Sok San, my assistant leader and I walked back to the campsite whilst the children had gotten another Kuyon ride, and we discussed Cambodian culture. Chan informed us that Laos was Cambodia’s closest ally; relationships with Thailand are tenuous, particularly recently, but it was Vietnam who were Cambodia’s ‘mortal enemy’.
Images:
- Top left: Deep-fried tarantula
- Top right: My accomodation at Camp Sok San
- Bottom left: Water Buffalo on the move in Sanvat
- Bottom right: The shed of the house in Sanvat where we built the squatting toilet
Days Ten and Eleven
We left cheerful Chan and Camp Sok San behind after five days of staying there, something I was, in some ways, quite happy for, as on my final night there, I had found several wolf spiders living inside my straw hut, and we took the coach southeast towards Siem Reap, Cambodia’s second city, and it’s one of the most visited by international tourists. On our journey to the city, we stopped at a small village just off the main road called Kampong Phluk, where we boarded a large wooden boat. The boat took us down the Tonle Sap River, past fishermen standing on small boats, rafts and sometimes up to their necks whilst standing in the water, despite the danger of multiple crocodile species in the water. We sailed out of the mouth of the river out on the Tonle Sap lake, the largest lake in Southeast Asia, which made us feel as if we had gone out to sea.
After returning to the coach, we headed on to our hotel, the Sovann Angkor Hotel, which was located on the eastern side of the city’s centre. After checking in at the hotel, we then headed back out to the ‘Made in Cambodia’ market, which was a far cry from Phnom Penh’s busy markets with Cambodia-related tat. This market had a large variety of more expensive but high-quality products, often hand-made, with a few Western tourists wandering around, like a ‘John Lewis of Cambodian Markets’, as I called it. From there I managed to buy several gifts for various family members, as well as a small canvas painting of a floating village at sunset for myself.
From the Made in Cambodia market, we walked right into the centre of Siem Reap, to Pub Street, a busy and touristy main street, which felt like what you might expect to find at the centre of Bangkok, covered in flashing signs and enormous banners saying ‘Pub Street’ in bright lights. We had dinner at the Red Piano, a famous restaurant overlooking the main square, and serving a mix of both Western and Eastern foods. After our dinner, we spent another hour in the Siem Reap night market before we headed back to the hotel. The following morning we were up early, and with good reason: to catch the sunrise at the place I had been most looking forward to visiting, Angkor Wat temple.
Just north of the modern city of Siem Reap are the ruins of Angkor, a huge collection of temples that made up the ancient capital of the Khmer Empire, now a protected and very impressive UNESCO World Heritage site. The largest of these temples is called Angkor Wat, the largest religious site in the world, as the temple and all of its grounds are nearly four times larger than Vatican City. We arrived so early to see the tranquil sunrise, standing outside the temple’s gates at about 6 am. Unfortunately for us, the sunrise was not so tranquil on the morning we had chosen to be there, as the Angkor Empire marathon was also taking place that day, so our special moment was accompanied by loud dubstep music blaring out and thousands of runners.
After sunrise, we headed into the temple complex for a walk around, an experience which came unguided; however, there were signs which kept you moving in the right general direction. After Angkor Wat, we toured around Bayon, the second largest temple, and Ta Prohm, a smaller temple with huge trees growing out of its roofs. We returned to the hotel, where I took time in the afternoon to meet with a friend from university, who happened to be staying in Siem Reap at the same time. In the evening, the expedition group and I visited the Cambodian Phare Circus, a very successful local circus group that had achieved the world record for ‘longest circus performance’ after a 24-hour show in 2021. We were treated to a spectacular event, including triple backflips and people firing bows and arrows with their feet – as my friend had told me, “If they were in the UK, they would never be off the TV”.
Images:
- Top left: Boats outside the floating village, Kampong Pluk
- Top right: Myself at the sunrise outside Angkor Watt
- Bottom left: Myself standing in Angkor Wat temple
- Bottom right: Entrance the Cambodian Phare Circus
Days Twelve to Seventeen
We spent a little time in Phnom Penh before we departed for our second project camp, with Sarun choosing to take us to the APOPO visitor centre on the city’s outskirts. APOPO is a business dedicated to training animals to detect landmines and tuberculosis, and in this case, using rats to detect landmines left along Cambodia’s border following the Vietnam War. We each took it in turn to hold the rats in question, giant African land rats, which were closer to being the size of a rabbit or a small cat than anything I would recognise as a rat. We visited a large supermarket called the Angkor Supermarket on the way back to the hotel, where the young people were excited to get their hands on some Western delicacies such as Kit Kats, Monster energy and Haribo’s, and I was surprised to even find some ‘Yorkshire Tea’ in the hot drinks aisle.
We went on to the second project camp, called Camp Beng Pae, which was westwards, being relatively close to Sok San (less than an hour’s drive from it). Beng Pae was a very different experience from Sok San, as it was larger, one of Camp International's oldest and most established campsites in the country. It was situated in a village commune called Phumi Andas, on the edge of a more jungled environment, and because of this, the madness of the wildlife vastly increased at this site. Across the next few days, we encountered various species of ants, large black scorpions, giant toads, giant millipedes and giant land snails. On the day we arrived, a large colourful snake was found by a member of one of the other expedition groups in the bowl of one of the camp toilets.
We were shown around the site by our second camp’s manager, Darra, who was more reserved than Chan. We also shared this site with multiple other groups, and Darra with his team made a considerable effort to provide things to do for the groups staying at the site. This included a dance put on by a local youth group, and then a talk by a survivor from the Khmer Rouge, who visited the site to talk to the groups about his experiences. I also decided to join a few of the young people on runs around the local area, and found myself often being chased by locals’ pet dogs. The most stand-out experience was at the end of our second full project work day at Beng Pae, where we walked into Phumi Andas, to the local temple received a Buddhist blessing from the local monk. This involved getting buckets of cold water chucked over our heads.
Whilst we were at this campsite, our project work included putting together the huge concrete wheels which make up the toilet basins, akin to the toilet that we put together during the first project. On the second day, we walked down to a house in Phumi Andas, and built another toilet over the next couple of days, a slightly smaller one than the previous one in Sanvat. We also visited another school, and spent time playing football with the local men, and teaching the primary school young people English again. Our time in Beng Pae was capped off with the arrival of Chan, who was welcomed with open arms, almost as if he were a celebrity. Darra and Chan put together a small campfire circle for us, where we spent the final evening at Beng Pae listening to music from a speaker, with good suggestions from the adults and poor suggestions from the young people.
We departed early the following morning, with the group taking a big photo at the doorway to Camp Beng Pae, and with myself getting a photo with Darra and Chan. We boarded the coach, and headed south to the port town of Sihanoukville, Cambodia’s largest port town, which was a journey of just over four hundred kilometres. Along the way, we stopped at another beautiful restaurant, where I had beef served in a hollowed-out pineapple. Next to our table was a row of ‘Happy Buddhas’, the rather jolly and rotund chap that most people associate with the term ‘Buddha’ (even though there are other types of Buddha. With Sarun having called me a happy Buddha earlier in the trip, I decided to get my photo with the set.
Images:
- Top left: Myself holding a giant African land rat at the APOPO visitor centre
- Top right: Entrance way to Camp Beng Pae
- Bottom left: My accomodation at Camp Beng Pae
- Bottom right: Myself having a Buddhist blessing at Phumi Andas Buddhist temple
Days Eighteen to Twenty-two
Later that day we arrived in Sihanoukville, where we booked into our guesthouse, called the Hong Long. The rooms in the Hong Long were small and very basic, and we were slightly disturbed to find bars over the windows and no fire escapes. Early the following morning, we were up and, as a group, headed out to the Autonomous Port, where we met Dennis, the camp manager for our dive camp, who joined us on the boat over to Koh Rong Sanloem, the island where we were to complete our dive course. Dennis was a jolly and slightly silly character, a German born in Hamburg, with an accent very similar to Henning Wehn. The boat over to Koh Rong Sanloem took around 45 minutes, and we arrived on the east side of the island in the late morning. We walked down to our base for the upcoming dive course, The Dive Shop Cambodia, which was one of the many attractions along the main beach.
It was here we met our dive instructors, none of whom were Cambodian, but were mostly Europeans who had moved to Cambodia for the season. For example, our dive instructor, Eugene, was a heavy-metal-loving middle-aged man from Kent. After kit talks and a swim test, Dennis and his family led us to our accommodation, which was on the opposite side of the island – taking us on a roped trek, our bags taken partway by a driver on a Kuyon. Dennis owned a villa and several outhouses on Sunset Beach, a smaller beach on the west of the island, which only had a few fixed resort buildings along it. This villa became our home for the next few days, as we took the trek back and forth over the island to get to the Dive Shop each day for the activities.
Despite the professionalism and skill of the dive instructors, I soon found that I did not enjoy diving much, and bowed out of the course on the second day, which allowed the instructors to focus on making sure the young people got the best experience possible. As the course went on, a few more members of the group dropped out of the course, and diving was quite a marmite activity. I had gone in with the assumption that my love of swimming would carry me across the line against sporting ability. On the third and fourth day of the course, the instructors took the young people who were still on the diving course out on the boat to open water around the coast of Koh Rong Sanloem, and the neighbouring island Koh Rong. Sarun and I accompanied them, spending time taking photos and looking after the boat’s equipment.
Our accommodation arrangements on Koh Rong Sanloem were somewhat different to that of the two project camps, as the young people were not given Wi-Fi whilst on the western side of the island where we were staying. This prompted them to explore the local area more, and down the beach were a German-owned coffee shop, a Spanish-owned pizza restaurant, and a French-owned French-style restaurant. They frequented the pizza restaurant, and one evening I got talking to the Spanish restaurant owner, who explained that he had been over in Cambodia for eight years, paying about two hundred euros equivalent in rent per month to own the restaurant. Certainly seemed like the life for some. Also, during the stay, the number of insects started to get beyond manageable, to the point where I needed to run up the jungle trek; if I stayed still, I would get bitten by a dozen mosquitoes at once.
We came to the end of this leg of the expedition with injuries including bruises, scrapes and bites, and in some ways I was glad to be moving on. It did feel to me as if we were nearing the end of the trip, and we got the vibe that some of the young people wanted to go home. We were, however, going to push on to one final project camp. We departed Koh Rong Sanloem after four days, and Dennis accompanied us to the pier, where we boarded a boat back to Sihanoukville. We boarded the coach and swung by Hong Long, where we picked up our lunch, which we were to eat on the coach. As we left Sihanoukville, we stopped on the outskirts to take photos with the Statue of Preah Thong Neang Neak, a pair of enormous statues in the middle of a large roundabout.
Images:
- Top left: Myself with Darra and Chan on departure from Camp Beng Pae
- Top right: The Dive Shop Cambodia
- Bottom left: Sign for Cambodia Koh Rong Sanloem, a large resort
- Bottom right: Pizza at Suboo Beach Restaurant
Days Twenty-Three to Twenty-Eight
On our way north to our final project camp, Camp Beng Melea, we stopped for the night in Phnom Penh due to the distance of the journey. We checked into the Onra Hotel for the second time, before heading into the city’s central market. This one was far grander and cleaner than the Russian Market, and I used my time there to pick up my last few family gifts and a replacement watch, having lost my watch back on Koh Rong Sanloem. We headed back to the river, and for dinner I had duck, potato, green beans and wasabi sauce. I am not sure if it was a traditional Cambodian dish, but it was one of the best meals I’d had on the trip yet.
In the morning we moved on, getting on the road early, and stopping for lunch at one of the most impressive restaurants yet; Prey Pos Rest Area, situated on the edge of Prey Pos Lake. It provided an outstanding view of the lake, as well as a large shop full of western food. It was around 4 pm when we finally arrived at Camp Beng Melea, situated close to the edge of Siem Reap. We were met there by our final camp manager, Han, who was full of energy, almost as if he lived entirely on a diet of caffeine, and his assistant, ‘Mr. J’. They greeted us off the coach, and Han proceeded to take us on an extensive tour of Camp Beng Melea, another jungle-based camp on the edge of Beng Melea village, which, like Sok San, we had to ourselves. Like Beng Pae, we were staying in Long Houses, with the young people staying in long dorms, whilst the adults got their own netted single rooms.
Our final project involved working on something different, as most of our working time was committed to building water pots, a process that started with building clay. Whilst we were productive as a group whilst working on all of our projects, this morning, things did descend into madness as the young people decided to have a clay fight, moving each other in clay, and then washing themselves off in a massive on-site basin. The following day, we took a break from the pots, and we were driven to a nearby plantation in minibuses provided by the local Camps International staff, where we planted two hundred trees over the course of the morning. During this day, the locals who were at the plantation with us picked out a number of tarantula nests, which they amazed the young people with by pulling out tarantulas and then aggressively de-fanging them between a pair of spades.
The tarantula-based fun didn’t stop there, however, as we then took those de-fanged tarantulas back to Camp Beng Melea, and the young people spent hours holding the tarantulas, naming them things such as ‘Tyrone’ and ‘Timmy’, and letting them crawl all over their person. After this sentimental episode, the camp staff asked if the young people wished to eat their new tarantula pets, to which they, of course, said yes. They tasted like heavily-barbecued sausage. On our final day at the camp, we taught English for one last time at the primary school, and laid a set of tiles akin to the ones we’d made back in Beng Pae. Over the course of this camp, I also managed to get out for a few runs, this time being followed by a pair of young local teenagers on a moped, who must have found it fascinating to see a large sweaty foreign man jogging up and down the hill on the edge of their village.
The afternoon of our final day involved walking over to the section of the camp where we had made the large water pots two days earlier, where a queue of Kuyons were amassing. There was a gathering of local families, whom Camps International were gifting these new water pots to, along with a flock of chickens that had been grown on the land of Camp Beng Pae. After the expedition group had hauled the water pots onto the Kuyons, a set of thank-you speeches were to take place. Han, Mr J, and the leader of the local families group all took it in turns to make a speech, and to my shock and horror, the microphone was passed to me, and Mr J informed me he would translate. I thanked the Cambodian people present for their hospitality, and rounded off my speech with “Thank you and arkoun”. Arkoun is Khmer (Cambodian) for thank you, and the only word that most of my expedition group learnt of the language. Unfortunately, this translated into “arkoun and arkoun”. No one seemed to notice.
Images:
- Top left: Myself and Sarun at the Statue of Preah Thong Neang Neak
- Top right: Water pot at Camp Beng Melea
- Bottom left: Live tarantulas at Camp Beng Melea
- Bottom right: View from Prey Pos Rest Area
Days Twenty-Nine and Thirty
On our final day at Camps Beng Melea, we had a morning off, so Han and Mr J led us on a walk out of the campsite and to Beng Melea Temple, a local temple ruin which was covered on the same ticket as the Angkor temple complex (as it was not that far away). I had assumed temple Beng Melea would be small as it was away from that Angkor temple site, but much like the other ancient Buddhist temples, it was very large. As a group, we walked around the site, taking in the views and maximising a few photo opportunities.
When we got back to camp, we then packed up quickly and took a short coach journey of less than an hour to get back to Siem Reap, where we booked into the Sovann Angkor Hotel once more. Once we’d booked in, we spent the afternoon relaxing in the hotel swimming pool, and I took some time to give myself a makeover, shaving the beard I’d had for months ahead of our final evening meal out. When we met in the hotel lobby, the group claimed that they hardly recognised me, but I didn’t look better or worse, just ‘different’. We visited another Cambodian market in the centre of Siem Reap, before dinner at the Red Piano, where I tried the Cambodian classics taster dish, one of the best meals yet.
The following morning we headed to the Living Arts Artisans Village, which operated as a museum showing the history of luxury manufacture in Siem Reap, and had an extremely expensive shop attached (I’ll admit, we were probably not the place’s intended customers). Their shop included luxury suits, scarves, carvings, sculptures, dresses and more. We walked into the city and had our last lunch, being joined by Ann and a man called Bunlay, who was the country’s manager for Camps International Cambodia. After dinner, we took the coach one last time to Siem Reap International Airport, the smaller but more modern of the country’s two airports. It was there we said goodbye to Sarun, who had been with us since the very beginning of the journey, and to me, it finally felt as if things were coming to an end.
We had a little time in Siem Reap airport, having gotten through the small check-in and security sections (it helped that the place was practically empty), and we settled in on our first flight, the shorter one back to Singapore Airport. On our way to Singapore, the school teacher and I sat together, and outside the window I saw a huge body of water on land, which I assumed was a river, but the teacher informed me that we were in fact looking at the huge Tonle Sap lake from above. We touched down in Singapore, and I killed the next three hours we had in the airport’s terminal three by walking around, visiting the airport’s butterfly garden with the assistant leader, and watching Captain America: Brave New World in the 24-hour cinema.
After a long time killing time in Singapore Airport, which was fine by me as it is a phenomenal airport, we boarded the long-haul flight back to London Gatwick, where I decided to burn through as many films on the Singapore Airlines catalogue as I could, and in between that, get a few short hours of sleep. When we arrived back in Gatwick, I said goodbye to the team before taking the shuttle bus back to my friends’ house.
Images:
- Top left: Entrance to Beng Melea Temple
- Top right: Myself in Beng Melea Temple
- Bottom left: The Pub Street in Siem Reap
- Bottom right: Overhead view of Tonle Sap
Useful Links
https://www.campsinternational.com/ - Camps International website
https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/cambodia - UK travel advice webpage for Cambodia
https://www.tourismcambodia.com/ - Cambodia official tourism page
https://www.angkorenterprise.gov.kh/en - Angkor complex official website
