The day begins with a drive to the Naga Bridge at Kampong Thom, then on towards Siem Reap and Kampong Kleang Floating village, roughly 55kilometers out from Siem reap town. It is a large settlement on the edge of Tonle Sap, South East Asia's largest lake. Once there you board a boat onto the water, and the place gives a clear look at a way of living unlike any other. Kompong Khleang is a year-round community set inside the lake's flood plain, ringed by flooded forest, with fishing as its livelihood. The houses shift along the river as the seasons turn, and the views across the water are broad and quiet. Lunch is at a local restaurant, after which you carry on to Siem Reap.

Set an alarm: today opens before first light so you can watch the sun come up behind Angkor Wat. Breakfast follows at a local restaurant, then to Angkor Thom's Southern Gate, the 'Great City', which gathers many of the best works built under King Jayavarman VII, ruler from 1181 to 1220. The gate itself carries the huge stone faces of Avalokiteshvara, 23m (75-foot) tall and familiar from the Tomb Raider movie; they leave most visitors quiet for a moment. Bayon, the state temple, stands at the heart of the citadel and is on the programme too, a temple-mountain finished late in the 12th century and covered with hundreds of enormous carved faces. The Terrace of Elephants is included, along with the Leper King Terrace, as are Baphuon and Phimeanakas, both dating from the 11th century. Ta Prohm closes the visit, and it stays with you: enormous trees have wrapped thick roots around the walls. Archaeologists left them deliberately when the forest was cut back, as a record of the state in which these ruins and their neighbours were first come upon. Trunks now grow through the stonework and rise well above the roofline of the temple.

Head out this morning for Beong Mealea Temple, pausing at the Local market at Domdek on the way. What is left of Boeng Mealea still lies half under vegetation, built from sandstone blocks cut with exact square edges. Its best decoration was carved in the first part of the 12th century. On several pediments the sculptors set out episodes from the Ramayana, and although Hindu imagery runs right through the site, Boeng Mealea reads as a Buddhist sanctuary, much like Banteay Samre, which dates from roughly the same period. The superb Bodhisattva Lokeshvara statue found within the monument, now kept at the Angkor Conservancy, settles the point. Lunch is traditional, eaten in a local restaurant among Cambodians, before the road carries you to Banteay Srei temple. The Land Mine Museum, opened in 1997, comes next; here defused and safe mines can be examined at close range, with explanations of how they function and how visitors can support the long work of clearing them from Cambodia and from other countries still living with them. Returning towards town, stop at a village producing sugar palm and at Banteay Samrea temple. The evening belongs to the one air-conditioned theatre in town, where Dancers, Singers and Musicians carry ancient Khmer culture into a striking setting, with some of the best food in Siem Reap on the table.

Farewells today, though you leave with plenty of stories to tell at home. A car runs you out to the airport in time for the onward flight.