The Buddha at the Chedi on Khao Tang Kuan, or Monkey Hill

Almost by accident, Songkhla became our main and only stop in Thailand. We got to Monkey Hill and to the Laem Samila, or Samila Beach to see the mermaid statue (it is lucky to touch her breasts, apparently, but I bet you it was a bloke who made up that story after being caught one night in an embarrassing situation....) and my personal favourite, the statue of the cat and the mouse, after whom the two islands you can see from Samila are named.

Apparently, the cat, the mouse and the dog were all passengers on a Chinese sampan (a wooden boat) and tried to steal a merchant's magic crystal. They jumped overboard with it, but all of them drowned, and the cat and mouse became the two islands, the dog became Khao Tang Kuan and the crystal became the white sands on the beach. I've really noticed that South East Asia like to do tragedy - you can tell from their pop videos (not that I spent the whole time watching Asian music videos, I spent most of my time in serious contemplation of the BBC World service, but tip for the weary, if you want to understand a culture, look at its music videos). Lots of the people in them die tragic deaths and their partners are left to mourn for them forever, leaving you thinking, Crikey, it's only a pop song.

Here they are, but no dog. Why no dog? I just don't know. Just no dog.

Anyhoo. So our plan was to be in Cambodia for my birthday on Friday. We thought that maybe this would still allow us time to visit a few places along the way, particularly Bangkok. I really wanted to be in Cambodia for my birthday (I have a secret dream about it and that's all I can tell you without risking your life in case it doesn't come true), and K and A will end their trip in Thailand anyway, so they will tour it at the end of their journey. We 'plan' (ho ho) to stay about a month in Cambodia before crossing into Vietnam, and I will fly solo from there (or that's the plan, nothing booked yet - ho ho) back to KL and home - Ta dah!

So we catch a bus from Songkhla back to Hat Yai, where we have a few hours to kill before the night bus to Bangkok (thought we'd save some more time by travelling at night). We like Hat Yai very much, and head back to a Thai cafe we fell in love with the first time we were there, well we fell in love with their food and we tend to think a lot with our stomachs! After dinner we dashed across the road to some street vendors and I bought two great pairs of new trousers, which are officially my new favourite things - fact.

The Dvaravati (a kingdom of Thailand that existed between C6th and C11th) Chedi (the Thai word for a Buddhist monument containing the remains of Buddhist relics, aka a stupa) on Monkey Hill - so beautiful.

The night bus to Bangkok was a real experience. I was sat in front of a woman and her toddler son, who spent the first two hours of the journey seemingly examining my scalp for fleas. This was a great opportunity for me to practice patience, and weirdly, I ended up finding it quite comforting, must be my monkey heritage! We were also treated to a showing of Dragonball Evolution, a great movie that, for the record, can be watched entirely dubbed in Thai with no loss of the story line whatsoever. Besides, the man who plays the lead is very attractive, so who cares what he's actually saying? I mean that with great respect, obviously.

Sleeping on the night bus was a real challenge though as I couldn't have my seat all the way back without squashing the little boy who was sleeping on his mother's lap, but I got enough sleep for me not to kill anyone en route, so that was something. The speed at which those night buses travel is really quite astounding too, I think they only get away with it because a) they don't care, b) driving like you have a deathwish in South East Asia seems to be compulsory and c) no one but the chronically insomniac is watching. Because I was so tired, I didn't have time to be scared as the bus seemed to lurch onto two wheels as it took a corner.

I was fascinated by these two Buddhist women, who were praying on Monkey Hill that day. The process is rather complicated to outsiders' eyes. First, they go round the four corners of the site, ringing the bells as they go and lighting incense at each of the shrines. Then they go to this shrine of the Buddha, light more incense, and then they pick up tubes of sticks, which they stand and shake until one falls out (there must be a way to do this so that only one falls out). The stick seems to have something written on it, because they looked at the stick closely and then went over to a large board that seems to tell them what it means.

The driver wakes you up at 2am precisely by turning all the lights on and playing terrible Thai music - I knew it was terrible because I'd seen so many good Thai music videos, see how useful a travelling tip the music video thing is? - so that you can get off at a large service station and get something to eat, although strangely enough no one seems that hungry at TWO O'CLOCK IN THE FRICKING MORNING, ARE YOU INSANE??????? (That's what happened in my mind as I actually had managed to fall asleep at that point).

All the smokers trudged off though, but significantly - drumroll please - I was not amongst them, as I am no longer a smoker - Fact.

I gave up smoking after a conversation with a boy called Reuben who I made friends with in the Perhentians when we discovered we both liked Marvel comics and would both quite like to try out being Wolverine (more than we fancied being Spiderman, who frankly, neither of us thought was all that - he was 12, I have no such excuse). I won't go into the details of it now, but for the first time in my life, I could not give a clear reason why I smoked. I actually felt a bit silly about it. I promised Reuben I would try not to smoke for the rest of the day.

The view from Monkey Hill over Songkhla - although it's much bigger than we thought it would be, it was still surprisingly walkable.....

He smiled with his trademark wisdom beyond years smile.

"Well, if you're going to try a day, you might as well try a week."

Well, a promise made between adults always has an element of knowing risk to it, but a promise made to a child has always seemed to me to be sacred. So a week it was, and that was 10 days ago. Cold turkey, over and out. I'm a non smoker. I figure if I can give up in South East Asia, where you can buy 20 Marlboro Lights for under £1, then by the time I get back to the prices in the UK, there'll be no chance of going back. Time for a change, right?

Anyhoo, so we get to Bangkok at 8am and hang at the bus station for some coffee - obviously. We planned to go to Bangkok, find a hostel, see some sights and leave maybe Wednesday for the border. But then we met a slightly strange Welsh guy who knew Thailand really well and had just come from Angkor Wat and he told us we could get the bus to the border in about an hour and be there in three hours - so we did!

The Chedi in the background, with a statue of a Buddhist monk in the foreground

On the bus I had time to feel a little sad about leaving Thailand, but I'm big on no regrets right now, so took the time to pick my sadness apart a little. After Songkhla, which I had really liked and the many Thai people we met on our travels, I was feeling good about Thailand and very curious to find out and see more. However, my brother is a big Thailand fan, and I also realised on the bus that it would be fantastic to have an excuse to come back here, but this time with him!!

So that's my new plan. I haven't really asked him about it, but I'm sure it will be fine. In fact, while I'm here, I have a new dream to organise a small group - maybe 10 people max to come back to South East Asia in the future, so if you're interested, sign up now and I'll get your name on the list.......

The border crossing to Cambodia? Without a doubt, my favourite out of the two we've done on foot so far. We were whisked from the bus station to a tuk tuk before we could say 'Where's my backpack going now?' and then we were sped to the border. This was fab because it was a tiny sort of truck tuk tuk and we hadn't done one of these before (we want to try all forms of transport South East Asia has to offer and have only baulked at motorbikes so far - mostly because we fear we are a potential deathtrap - but I'm even starting to be tempted by that......)

I've taken a lot of photos of monkeys during our brief stay in Thailand, but this is my very favourite...
I'm calling this one, 'Are you there? Is anyone up there?'

Or rather, we thought we were going to the border. We were actually taken to an open-fronted tin hut that had 'Welcome to Cambodia' spray painted on it, and which was staffed by teenagers. Very friendly teenagers, but teenagers nonetheless. One of them had a voice that was still breaking. We were told that we could get our visas here, and though we asked about the border with some insistence, we were told we could no longer get them on arrival there. We were hesitant, and Kate, who is the Lonely Planet Queen, was adamant that this was awry, but then loads of other Westerners started to file in, including people who had been on our bus and they didn't seem bothered so we joined them and got our visas in three seconds flat, were back in the tuk tuk and off to the border. Our wallets felt lighter than they should have, but we had the visas.

Our biggest fear was that the visas weren't genuine (although they looked it, and were now affixed within our passports) and that we would be turned away at the border, but immigration was no problem and sure enough there was a sign in the Immigration Office saying that they are currently not doing visas on arrival as they are tightening their passport control (I thought about writing a note for the suggestion box to point out that allowing adolescents to produce visas at over the odds prices in tandem with local transport operators might be a start to regulating this, but a member of staff had obviously taken the suggestion box to empty it, as there wasn't one around).

The Mermaid of Samila Beach and her outrageously lucky breasts, not that you can really see them here.

I did find out later online that we had paid over the odds for ours, and that this is par for the course if you don't want to sort it at an Embassy before you go (which can take 3 days) and that there are loads of these visa businesses operating on the border, and it's completely down to the tuk tuk driver which one you're taken to, as they get a cut from the extra money you pay.

In reality, we only paid an extra 10 US dollars for the privilege of this utterly surreal experience, and I'm inclined to think it was worth it. These guys really work for their money, harder than any sales person I've seen in the West, and on a serious note, it's a key indicator to how hard it is to make a decent living here. We crossed the border at Aranya Prathet, Thailand and arrived in Poipet, Cambodia just seconds later.

Scams on transport links from Poipet also abound, and a sweet smooth talker called Leung tried to hook us one of those (the Cambodian government likes to tourists to only travel from the border in tourist buses or private taxis, so bus companies have started to hook up with guest houses in order to increase commission, so if you want to choose your guest house, get a taxi - it also takes 3 hours less time).

A monkey baby and his monkey mum - I'm calling this one 'Oh baby, baby, how was I supposed to know (the banana was all gone?'

You have to catch a free shuttle bus to get to the tourist bus station, but we resisted Leung's charms (even though he insisted on keeping a bus filled with passengers waiting for the whole time we refused) and said we'd chance it. We were prepared to stay in Poi Pet (aka scam central) and visit the casinos from which the town is starting to make its name, if necessary, until we knew more about the buses from a source of information that wouldn't earn money from our decision.

As the fates would have it, we were tucking into some pretty heavenly spring rolls when two American dudes, Greg and Adrian, rocked up in a shuttle bus and asked if we wanted to share a taxi from Poi Pet to Siem Riep (the local base from which most people tour the temples). Yes, we did. Our first ride in a car since our first night in Penang, and it worked out to only about $10 per head - the same price as the tourist bus. Admittedly, Ang sat on Kate's lap (I got to sit with the driver and helped him when we needed to veer wildly round trucks to overtake without playing chicken with oncoming traffic) for the journey, but the five of us did not stop talking until we arrived.

Greg and Adrian grew up not far from Manhattan and now live in Brooklyn, New York in a house share with a load of their friends - and they've all known each other since they were kids!! They are doing a round the world tour, and have already been travelling over a year. They introduced me to 'Wwoofing', which is neither a typo or what you're thinking, but refers to World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, where basically you stay on someone's farm and they feed you in exchange for you working for them, which they did in Australia. These guys are self-confessed Anglophiles and I am a huge fan of New York, so we got on really well, and really made each other laugh.

This girl was so keen to be photographed that I had to oblige as she really made me laugh! This was her favourite pose and though I wanted to catch her doing something more natural, she was adamant this was the one...Incidentally, that's candy floss she's got. You could buy it on the beach. I wasn't just interested in her because she had candy floss, it was the whole social and cultural experience.

Best of all, they got us a room at the guest house they had booked in advance (the first time they've done this in a year) called Happy Guest House in Siem Reap, which is our new home - there's a TV here, too! This is so much more upmarket than we're used to. The sheets are clean. I mean, they're actually white. It's like the Hilton. And they do a Khmer (local word for Cambodian) dish called amok with vegetables in a coconut curry sauce, it's like vegetables just dived into Angel Delight with curry powder and were then blessed by the God of Food. Exactly like that.

Siem Reap was once a small cluster of villages along the river, but is now a bustling little hive of construction and industry as it tries to meet the demand from tourists travelling to the temples of the surrounding region. Cambodia places more emphasis on sustainable tourism, though, than any place we have been so far, and Siem Reap, as well as being the place we will visit the temples from, also has a wide array of NGO projects that we intend to visit and support. Even cafes here have a social purpose. One called The Singing Tree we intend to visit tomorrow night for their film night, and has yoga and meditation classes (and hip hop dance classes) and an opportunity to Chat with a Buddhist monk on Saturday. It functions as a kind of community centre, but also aims to promote 'social ecology', serving mostly vegetarian food, and promoting and supporting local environmental and social projects through their shop and library (it wasn't the library that hooked me, honest).

Today though, we just took the opportunity to chill out after over 24 hours of solid travel. The girls snuck off for a few hours to do some secret things that I was not allowed to do, possibly related to my birthday, and I had the arduous job of sitting around in a big round chair identical to my one at home, chatting to the staff in broken English, talking to the cat, reading and sometimes snoozing. Tough work. Then we broke all our own rules and went to a local restaurant for the BEST pizza I can ever remember tasting, ever. Ever. We barely ate all three of them, it was tough, but the Khmer woman who owned it seemed to find us quite amusing as we moaned and groaned in ecstasy through the meal.

Why don't we have signs like this in the UK, instead of all those ones telling us not to do things? Surely this is more useful?

On our return, we were walking up the path as a young man walked down it and suddenly we all cried out: "Oh my God!!! Jeff!!"

It was Jeff (as you might have gathered) our young travelling friend and solo flyer we met in Penang on our first visit there (remember the crazy girl, the temple and Penang Hill?). It was fantastic to see him again and we all sat down to catch up. He has come from Vietnam and was full of recommendations for us, places to go and things to try. He is only in Siem Reap for two days and heads off tomorrow to do the temples, so we may see him again there - small world, huh?

OK, that's all I've got for now and sorry no photos of Cambodia yet, but worry ye not, faithful readers, this will be sorted tomorrow, I'll lay money on it. I'll post soon, hopefully on or just after my birthday. Try not to miss me too much on the day - I know this is going to be very hard, but you can utilise the time wisely planning gifts and surprises for my return on 15th August, or sometime round then, just in time for H's birthday! - and if you can, please light a candle for me if you remember on Friday?