We called it “The Wrong Way Round”, our round the world trip, travelling east, losing a day crossing the date line, always in the wrong place at the wrong time. But that double negative makes me think we were just where we needed to be. Nepal in the Monsoon, Thailand in a typhoon, Japan as fall fell into winter and the USA in minus 16 blizzards. But Cambodia, squeezed in between Thailand and Japan, was just perfect. Perhaps not a holiday, that was Thailand, with easy times, friendly elephants and beaches, Cambodia was the start of more involved and baffling travelling, and had a special bliss for me, returning back after thirteen years, so eager to share this place with my family.

Before, I was one pair of eyes, drinking it all in in monochrome. Now with my family I have three more pairs, three more opinions and impressions, three more responses and a hundred questions. It is a novel experience to look for familiar locations, to connect past with present. It is so different, and so overwhelming from a sensory point of view, that the past is not that visible. I know I was here before, but the old streets are surrounded and disguised in a new urban sprawl and our concerns are very much immediate and present moment focused: finding our way around, ensuring Kai and Lilah are happy and comfortable, drinking enough clean water, not being bitten by mozzies or burnt by the sun.

For educational purposes Jeannie keeps the kids busy with a traffic survey while I go off on a moto-taxi looking for my old work colleagues from thirteen years ago. I return with my dear friend Chavvy to hear the results of the survey. The headline is that the number of pigs you can get on the back of a motorbike largely depends on how big the pigs are. You can carry 6 middle sized pigs or one really big one on the back in a wide bore pipe (pun noted). Whole families of up to 5 people can travel on one motorbike. From the front: baby, then dad, then 2 kids, then mum taking up the rear. In one minute outside the café in Sisophon they saw an average of: 33 motorbikes, 9 ¼ cars, ¼ horse and cart, ¼ bicycle.

We wander through the market for lunch, buying fruit, but not the eels; bread, but not the live frogs or terrapins. Pretty gruesome stuff and the kids are impressed. Lilah keeps getting affectionate assaults: “Saht na!” the women say (“So cute!”), smiling at her and squeezing her nose. They are delightful, but it is a bit much, so I retaliate and pinch their noses too, with playfulness and affection. We all laugh. These people are amazing and beautiful, open and kind, despite or perhaps because of their recent history, which lurks there in the dark of their collective consciousness.