But these are just boring statistics. As the video below shows, there are much more important reasons to encourage investment in space exploration.  Inspired by the 50th anniversary of the first orbit of Earth by a man, a team of  designers and researchers decided to launch a weather balloon into space. This is the result:

There’s also a great making-of video on their homepage.

I got on, following a young monk and his brother onto the upper deck of the boat. Here, I saw my sleeping quarters for the first time – a nice hard wooden bench right above the noisy, noxious engines. I knew I wasn’t going to get any sleep, so turned to the monk to say hello. It turned out he and his brother were heading home to celebrate Cambodian New Year on the island with their family. We got on well for the first hour, practising our language skills on each other. I liked him a little less, when he said he was getting a headache and asked for some aspirin. I got out my packet to give him a pill, and he grabbed my whole supply. Who did he think I was, MSF? Conversation dwindled after that, so I feigned sleep for as long as I could.  At a little past 3am, my destination appeared on the horizon.

Sarah had arranged for me to stay at one of the two island’s hostels, where I could sleep for a few hours before she would pick me up and take me on a day trip snorkelling around the coast. Unfortunately, as I was born an idiot, I went to the wrong hostel. It was also still pitch dark at this point, and there were no signposts at all. I was lucky to have found any hostel at all. As such, I wasn’t picked up, wasn’t taken scuba diving and was annoyed at Sarah for apparently having forgotten me. Around 10am, I decided to have a walk around the island, see thesights (of which there are few) and go find Sarah and yell at her.

Koh Sdach only has one street, running down the length of the island. Everyone lives on this road, from the cute little street kids who smile and wave and shout ‘hello’ at you to the island’s pseudo-mafia boss riding his motorbike carrying a tiny chihuahua in the front basket. I eventually found Sarah, who had gone out to look for me. She explained the confusion, how her boyfriend had spent ages looking for me earlier. The scuba boat had gone without me, she said, but I was welcome to take a snorkel and flippers and explore the coast. I was annoyed (at myself now) for missing the scuba boat, as I’d never been scubaing before, except for one disappointing trip in mid-winter on the south coast of England, where the only wildlife I saw was half a fish.
I left Sarah doing some important work on her computer. As well as running a scuba diving company with her boyfriend, they are also trying to set up a marine conservation area around the island. She explained that they’ve been teaching school children about wildlife, and helping the local fishermen organise a community-led sustainable fishery. It’s all very admirable stuff. I left to be frivolous and selfish and have fun snorkelling. Sarah ruined it a little by saying that the area does have a few stonefish so I should be careful. Knowing that its venom is one of the most painful, I was incredibly nervous wading out. Half way to swimming to a nearby island, I had a minor panic attack and had to turn back. To calm down, I made myself an impressive sand castle, a miniature recreation of the temples of Angkor (which I would visit later).

I returned back to Sarah’s house. We had lunch in a tiny local restaurant where, thanks to  Sarah’s Cambodian language skills, we had a delicious meal. When we got back to the house, the scuba team had also returned. We chatted about the dive (which apparently wasn’t that great anyway) and other things for a few hours. Then, Sarah’s housekeeper cooked for us all another delicious meal, while we gradually got quite merry drinking local beer.

I had to leave at 4am the following morning, as this was the last boat that was going to leave the island for a whole week (since it was New Year).  Luckily, it was impossible to sleep in Sarah’s house as it was, with no exaggeration, about a million degrees in there. I snuck out as quietly as I could, promptly knocking over dishes and waking the sleeping chickens outside. Getting to the dock, there was no helpful woman to guide me to the right boat, so I picked one more or less at random and boarded. This boat was a lot more crowded than the last, but I managed to find a bench to sit on. Once the boat set, it was only a few minutes before the sun began to rise, which was magnificent as the boat passed sleepily between the other countless tropical islands.

Turns out, it was just a few places next door. Feeling stupid and resolved to actually researching places in foreign countries before I visited them (which I would obviously never do), I checked in and crashed for a few hours. I wasn’t really looking forward to dinner time, because it would mean eating alone. Although I’d odne this quite a lot in the first part of my trip, this wasn’t something I liked doing now, having travelled around and ate with the same people for a long time. I went out forlornely looking for some hole to hide in, but within 20 meters of Mick ‘n’ Craigs, I heard a voice behind me call my name. I turned around to see two girls I had met on a tour bus in central Vietnam weeks earlier. We had got on well, unforunately though I hadn’t remembered there names. They forgave me to start with, refreshing my memory of their names (Anouk and Julie), but became increasingly annoyed as I continuously forgot their names again and again. I bought them both a drink and all was forgiven. We had a good time drinking and eating bad Asian bar food, and was ready to continue the night at the clubs down on the waterfront. Unfoarunetly, the two girls whose names I’ve forgotten again were due to get an early boat the next day to one of the sandy beached islands off the coast, so politely declined.

So I did something I didnt think I ever would, associating it with only sad and lonely old men, and went to a club on my own. Turns out, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. On the walk down to the beach, a girl was handing out free drinks and flyers to the bar she was promoting. Our converastion pretty much went like this. Me: “You’re English arent you?”. Her: “Yes, I’m from near London”. “Me too, where abouts?” “Buckinghamshire.” “Me too, where abouts?” This went on a fair few rounds. Turns out she was from the village just next to mine (I wont say exactly where, don’t want stalkers), which was pretty exciting, and as a bonus, got me a few more free shots of booze. At the club itself, I found you could go up to pretty much anyone, and say quite pathetically “I’m on my own, can I talk to you?” As long as you aren’t dressed completely like a slaughterhouse worker and don’t smell like one, most people are happy to talk to you. I also found out that if given enough drink, I’ll happily do the Carlton dance from Fresh Prince of Belair (garnering much positive attention from the ladies, I might add).

The next day, I headed to the hotel’s restaurant for a restorative dose of bacon and eggs. Coincidence number two happened at this point, as two more travellers I had met previously – Jon and Stevie – walked through the door. They were going to be staying in the same hotel as me. Accustomed to being a third wheel at this point, I tagged along with them to a much more seculded and romantic beach than the one which housed most of the town’s bars and clubs. Called Otres beach, its miles of sandy beaches, and acres of warm clear ocean water seemed perfectly designed to relax. The same is also true of the dozens of wooden shacks selling “magic herb pizzas” and “joints” – whatever they were.

Coincidence number three happened, when I checked my emails finding one from my adopted friends (the Archies) who had also just got into town, after taking a different route down from mid-Vietnam, where I had seen them last. After the sun set on Otres, which was a very romantic time for me and Jon and Stevie, we tuktuked back to our hotel, to find the Archies playing pool. We all had a lovely meal of roast pork, which apparantly was voted in the top 10 of all roast dinners in the world (an acclaim I still somehow find hard to believe). Thankfully, all 4 of them were keen on heading out, so we all had a great night out. I tried to teach them the alluring powers of the Carlton dance, but they didn’t seem to get it.

The next day, Jon and Stevie had to leave for Phnom Penh, and the Archies were heading to some island. I would be going to my own island that night, so spent the day alone on the beach. This mainly involved fending off middle aged women who wanted to cut my toe nails or give me massages, and get outsmarted by 7 year old children trying to sell me useless tourist tat. At 9pm, I was taken by a motorbike driver with no sense of fear to the port where I was to take a boat to my next destination – Koh Sdach.

To start with, I checked into a hostel called Blissful, which was, indeed, eponymous.  With a glass of beer, under the shade of a palm tree in a slowly swinging hammock, chatting to some new friends, I certainly felt a lot more bliss than in the past few days.

After a somewhat sweaty night’s sleep, I woke excited and slightly apprehensively. This was because I had been persuaded, the day before, to rent a motorbike for the day, and ride around the countryside. I had never ridden a motorbike before, and not even driven a car more than a hundred yards (on a private road, at a glacial pace, with a terrified parent in the passenger seat). I asked the attendant at the motorbike rental place, how these contraptions actually worked, and he looked at me with a pretty morose, bored face. “Press starter button to start, pull accelerator to go, pull brake to stop,” was pretty much verbatim what he said. And, indeed, it was that simple; within seconds I felt like I had been driving for centuries. My confidence waned somewhat at my first encounter with another vehicle on the road, but I successfully avoided being run over, and gradually I began to feel natural driving on my ‘hog’.

My destination was Bokor National Park, a huge forested hill some 30km away. The drive there was lovely; seeing olde time villages, ploughed fields, children playing, etc. But the drive up to the top of the hill was even better. Every 200m or so, the road would warp aggressively, allowing me to practice my MotoGP turns. And, periodically on the straits, there were convenient laybys to take in the breathtaking view over the landscape.

Now and again, old relics of a former French settlement would appear; a dilapidated church, ruined houses being swallowed by shrubbery. More modern human influences were much more visible. At the top, construction work was continuing on a massive casino complex. Dozens of trucks and hundreds of tired men lumbered up the hill alongside me. It was sad to see such massive engineering works taking place, as the park is supposedly (or was) home to a population of elephants and other wild mammals. In a rush to develop the region to make some quick cash, the country has forgotten the immense value wild open spaces will have in the future, both environmentally and economically in the form of ecotourism.

Anyway, most of it was still green and pleasant while I was there, and the views from the top, when the low lying cloud cleared, was fantastic.

Heading back down again, I smelt the familiar smell of my flesh burning. In my initial excitement of controlling an actual motor vehicle, I had forgotten to put sun tan lotion on. And, with the breeze running across my skin, I hadnt noticed myself gradually turning into a lobster. I covered up as best I could and headed home to rest and recuperate in the shade of my hostel.

I had the bike for a full 24 hours (at a very reasonable rate of $4), so I headed out in the early evening again, staying around town this time. I drove along a riverbank path, which eventually just became people’s back gardens, but they didn’t seem to mind, so I waved at them and drove on to a particularly scenic spot for the sunset.

I handed the bike in, had a good night’s sleep – my final rest before the hectic, electric atmosphere of my next destination, the party town Sihanoukville.

It started out inoccuously enough. Walking out of my hostel, I turned right onto the short road, eventually meeting the river Mekong, which was a muddy, sprawling sight, but quite beautiful in the setting sun. I walked down the bank just a short way, when I heard a voice behind me saying “Hello there”. He introduced himself as a fellow traveler (from the Philippines). He seemed very nice, and we chatted about this and that, and so when he offered dinner with his family, I happily agreed.  We got a tuktuk across town to his uncle’s apartment who he was staying with. Some cousins, aunts, etc were there, and we shared a lovely dinner of chicken curry, banana flower salad and potato. Things turned strange, though, when the uncle – a croupier at a nearby casino – invited me to play blackjack. He led me by the shoulder into his bedroom, where a card table and chips were waiting. Although I tried to explain to him that I already knew blackjack, he kept going over the rules. He then showed me how to cheat rich bankers, one of which the uncle said would be coming soon to play.  It wasn’t a very subtle affair. He would simply raise his fingers in a simple pattern to tell me what card was coming next; I could then bet accordingly to always beat the rich competitor.  My nerves began prickling when he said he would offer me 30% of all the winnings we would swindle off the rich banker. He would put up all the money, but if I wanted to add any more myself, then that would be fine. I later found out that this encounter is quite a regular scam for tourists, who are usually drunk at the time. I, luckily, was sobre, and in charge of my faculties enough to know that I was about to be robbed barefaced. I got out as quickly and politely as I could. Thinking back on the meeting in the tuktuk ride home, I realised I had actually stolen a free dinner off the scam artists. Although this made me feel a little better, the whole experience soured my impression of the country. In a naive, condescending way, I had thought all the locals would be happy and friendly; always willing to help a stranded tourist. I forgot that in every country, there will always be bastards.

My bad mood continued into the next day when I visited the city’s two most famous landmarks: Tuol Sleung prison and the Killing Fields memorial. The prison, which was housed in old school buildings, was bleak.  In one block, old metal beds occupy dozens of rooms, beds which were used to torture and electrocute victims of the Khmer Rouge’s regime. On the walls, photos show the last  occupants of the beds, as they were found at the end of the Regime in 1979.

In other blocks, hundreds maybe thousands of photos have been pinned up, showing occupants of the prison at the start of their ordeals. Other rooms had been divided into dozens of tiny brick cells, with no light or proper sanitation, to house the many prisoners, before they were tortured or sent to the killing fields.

My journey to the killing fields was pleasant; in an open sided tuk tuk, with bright sunshine and a cool breeze. But the journey for the people coming from the prison in the 1970s was anything but. Herded in by the dozen into the backs of overcrowded trucks, in the middle of the night, and with no knowledge of what was to come, it must have been terrifying and bewildering. The fields themselves were similarly confusing. Blaring nationalistic music was played constantly on tinny speakers, an attempt to cover up the screams from the hundreds dying every day. Without guns (which were too expensive apparently), most of the murders were done with knives, axes, farming equipment, even razor sharp palm leaves. The most emotional part for me was the killing tree – an inoccuous looking tree that was the backdrop for the murders of hundreds of women and children. To this day, blood can still be seen on its branches. Similarly, bone and hair and rags of clothing are still surfacing from the mass graves dug around the site. A memorial tower with hundreds of skulls sits in the middle of the site.

You can imagine the mood I was in when I was leaving. Now imagine being asked by the tuktuk driver – his hand holding a glossy leaflet with smiling westerners on it –  if you would like to fire an AK47 or a bazooka. I tried to explain to him the concepts of tact and decency, but I guess they  got lost in translation.

I perked my mood up a little in the evening by going out for dinner and drinks with some fellow travellers from the hostel, and talking to the hostel owner, who living in the country for decades, had some great stories to tell. Stories involving children abandoned on his doorstep, and stories involving being nearly blown up by communist insurgents. Cool stories like that. I needed to perk up even more though, so I booked myself onto a coach for Kampot – a sleeply little village near the south coast famous for being one of the most relaxed places on Earth. I’ll let you know how it went.