Cambodia

Page 2.

The biggest attraction for me in Kampong Cham, and the main reason why I wanted to visit, was the Bamboo Bridge. A bridge that's rebuilt by hand every year in the dry season to connect an island, home to Cham villages, and the mainland for the few months when the river is too low to row a boat across. Check out the photos but it’s a pretty cool bridge and impressively built. When we hired bikes and cycled across it Rachel was almost pushed off in to the water by a guy with a horse and cart coming the other way...which she wasn't too happy about and you can't blame her really because there would have been a pretty good chance of her falling to her death. That’s probably why, if you speak to her, the bridge isn’t one of her fondest memories of Kampong Cham.

On our first afternoon there we headed up two hills called ‘man’ and ‘woman’. On top of Man Hill there was a Wat, which the Khmer Rouge used as a prison and to kill people. There is a statue that the Rouge used to sharpen their knives on before they hacked people to death. We also fed bananas to some wild, but very passive monkeys, which was pretty cool (see the photo's) and climbed up a few hundred steps to another Wat on Woman Hill to have a look at the nice view and then climbed back down again. We then headed over to see some orphan kids (or former orphans) do some traditional dancing. Their teacher was a nice guy who also performed with them. He mostly played a woman's role, but as our amused driver Mr. Buth pointed out, "it's okay for him to do it, because he's gay!" Maybe he thought we would have been offended if he wasn’t gay and doing a woman’s dance, I don’t know, but we nodded in an approving way. We also visited a small pre-Angkorian temple. Mr. Buth snuck us in the back because there was a policeman at the entrance asking for payment to visit. Don’t think for one moment that we were being skin flints by not paying, it's actually free to visit the temple, the policeman just drives past on his bike and demands 'entrance' money from tourists. If there's one thing you can say about the Cambodian Police it's that they're pretty good at being bent.

On the second day we drove passed the Chili and Peanut farms and the Lotus flower fields. You can actually eat the peas which are in the pod of the lotus flower; they have a runner bean-like taste to them. We bought some scarves from a family in Prey Chung Kran weaving village. We saw them weave the scarves we bought, which was nice. Plus they were cheaper than in the market, another bonus! To cap our tour off we drove out all the way to Mha Leap pagoda complex (with a short detour to see a Rubber Plantation), which is one of the last remaining wooden pagodas in the country (the Rouge didn’t burn it because luckily they used it as a hospital). The Pagoda floor was covered in pigeon poop, which was nice to walk in, especially as you have to leave your shoes outside. We got there just as the local school had a lunch break so all the kids ran over to hang around us while we looked around. They posed for photo’s and enjoyed looking at themselves on the camera screen. They only left us alone when a guy with a horse and cart caught their attention and they all ran off trying to jump on the back of it. Then the school bell rung and they all went back in to class. Only one kid stayed outside and when we asked why he wasn’t going in with the rest of them we were told us that the kids are given a small amount of money each day by their parents to pay the teacher. Some days the kids use the money to buy some food so can’t give the teacher any money and therefore are not allowed in to the class rooms. Of course they can’t go home because there parents would find out, so they hang around outside the classrooms instead. Before we left we popped in to the village doctor’s surgery, where we had a lovely chat with the doctors and nurses, even though they only spoke French.

Mr. Buth, our Tuk Tuk guide, was heading over to Ireland soon to visit his friend, so while he drove us around he was asking us all sorts of questions about home, the schools, the money, the government, the monarchy and the history of the UK and Ireland. Obviously we were no real use to him and most of his questions were met with 'errr dunno' and we would then stare blankly at the sky and pick our noses. I hope he didn’t think we were idiots.
As soon as he found out we were heading up to Siem Reap the next day, he gave his friend (a fellow tuk tuker) a call to arrange for him to pick us up from the bus station.

On the way to Siem Reap the bus driver noticed one of the wheels wasn’t right and would need to be replaced. We pulled over and all the Cambodian men and me got off the bus to inspect it. After 5 minutes of looking, pointing, raising eyebrows and shaking our heads, we were all in agreement that the wheel did indeed need changing. We then stood around supervising the mechanic and nodded our approval as he changed it. I won’t lie there was a bond between us for those magical 10 minutes.

When we got to Siem Reap, in the 38 degree heat, noise and pure madness of Tuk Tuk drivers and moto taxi guys crazily hawking for business, at the back of them all, stood Chan, with a big grin across his face, holding up a sign saying ‘welcome to Siem Reap Rachel and Joseph’. Which was rather refreshing don’t you think?

"There are 7,000 tuk tuks in Siem Reap, that's a fact..." Kate Melua probably wouldn't have sung if she had been to Cambodia. Our Tuk Tuk driver was number 6064. I wonder if it's like that TV series 'The Prisoner' from the 1960's. Who is number 1? Can you work your way up? I kept looking over my shoulder, paranoid that a giant white balloon was following me. You will also be glad to know that by the time I got to Siem Reap my Laughing Cow consumption has dramatically decline to almost zero. Which is good because at one point I thought all the cows in the field were laughing at me, and when that happens you know you have problems. I was almost tempted to head back to Phnom Penh and shoot one at the shooting range, just to even the score a little. But I thought that might be a little dangerous as I could break out of the range and start mowing down innocent cows in the fields while madly cackling to myself and then running down the street doing a little jig...if you’re ever going to be famous for something the 'homicidal Cambodian cow killer' is never a good look.

We spent the first afternoon checking out the town. In the supermarket we stood behind the most stupidest French person, who would easily win 'most stupidest person of the year' award if they gave one out. She tried to buy her beer and snacks with Euros. This is Cambodia, they accept Riel, Dollars or even Thai Baht at a push, but Euros? The checkout girl just stood their not knowing what to do. In the end they were way too polite and accommodating and found out the exchange rate from a shop outside and accepted the Euros. I think it's because it was a new shop and they wanted to make a good impression, but I would have taken the note, shoved it up her arse and told her to come back when she's crapped out a few dollars. Maybe that's just ‘westerner’ talk, although I’m sure that’s what they would have done in Paris.
We were also told before we arrived here that there would be loads of beggars. But looking around we couldn't see any so joked that maybe they had rounded them all up in a truck and taken them away....we found out from Chan that that's just what they did, a few months before we got there.

Chan was going to be our driver and guide for the next three days, and he turned out to be one of the nicest people we have met so far. He was pretty new to Siem Reap. His mother-in-law had told him to move there when he got married. His new born kid and wife are now back in Kampong Cham while he’s here making some moolah. His mother-in-law used her house as collateral with the bank to get a loan to buy his tuk tuk so I guess she gets to call the shots.

There’s not a lot I can say about the temples other than they’re pretty spectacular and there are loads of them. Look at the photo’s if you want to know what they are like and buy a history book if you want to know about how, when and why they were built. I can’t explain it all here because there are oodles of facts and figures about them and quite frankly this blog is long and boring enough thank you very much. Therefore I’m afraid you’ll just have to believe me when I say they were all rather lovely. We got up early one morning (5am) to see sunrise at Angkor Wat, but it was too cloudy so didn’t see much. We then stayed out two days running to see a sunset, one evening climbing up to the top of a hill, but it was too cloudy so there was no sunset. But even though we didn’t get to see a sunrise or sunset over Angkor Wat (which is supposed to be the highlight of the trip) it was still worth the admission price of the three day ticket we bought. Our favourites were the Bayon (the one with the faces), Ta Prohm (where all the overgrown trees are literally strangling the temple to rubble) and Banteay Srei (which is quite a way out, but has loads of amazing intricate carvings). After two full days we were seriously templed out so spent the last day visiting a crocodile farm (not the most safety conscious place I’ve ever been too) and a cultural show.

We were a bit skeptical about going to this show, we had already sat through a few traditional dances and although interesting they could get pretty boring after 5 minutes, plus the tickets were pretty expensive for non-Cambodians. But Chan was very eager that we go and the look of excitement on his face (which was only matched when we asked him to take us to the crocodile farm earlier in the day) persuaded us to give it a go. And we were glad we did, because it was spiffing entertainment. Basically it’s spread out like a Disney style theme park but minus the rides. There were different minority village reconstructions each with a little stage where young actors and actresses would act out scenes from different aspects of Cambodian culture and minority village life. It was surprisingly funny and the audience really got in to the spirit of it all. It was mainly Cambodians there, young and old, families and groups of friends and very few tourists. As there were very few white faces whenever it came to audience participation (which happened a lot) you sort of stood out from the crowd and made yourself a target. We had a right ruddy good larf at some poor sods expense when he was dragged out, made to dress in a loin cloth and dance around on stage. I was still looking back at the photos, chuckling to myself when I looked up and got dragged out to appear in the next scene. Dammit! Luckily I didn’t have to dress in a loin cloth. When the guy took me backstage he said “have you ever ridden a water buffalo?” I said’ “no” thinking I’m going to have to act like I was riding one. He then took me around the corner and I was suddenly stood eye to eye with a real buffalo, which took me by surprise a little. I had to ride it out on stage and then dance and act in a few scenes for the amusement of a few hundred Cambodians watching. Now I’m not saying I was good, but I’m up for an Olivier award in the summer.
I can now cross ‘water buffalo’ off my ‘animals to ride on before I die’ list. Only that elusive Pigmy Goat to go.

On our last day we headed off to do some horse riding around the countryside. It was a 2hr circuit which took us through a few villages to an old temple and then back to the stable again. Rachel was in her element here, being actually able to ride a horse, where as I on the other hand took the ‘let the horse wander off and do what he pleased’ approach to horse riding. This was my first time riding a horse and I learnt two things. One, all horse riders must be eunuchs. And two, they must have arse cheeks of steel. In fact after all the abuse my own buttocks had been given over the last month, the bumpy bus rides, the cycling, the walking around the temples and then the horse riding, they decided they had had enough, detached themselves from my body and booked a ticket on the next flight home. If someone wouldn't mind keeping an eye out for them. They haven't called to say they got back safe so I’m afraid that they've been picked up by a scrupulous Russian Taxi Driver and they are now working in Staines as a Sex Slave. I've seen the news, I know what can happen.

Anyway, Siem Reap itself was a lovely laidback city, which is surprising considering the amount of tourists that come through its doors. You can officially say this place has the Joe and Rachel stamp of approval.

Before we headed out of Cambodia we decided we would pop over to Battambang for a couple of days just because we could. It's nice old city which has lost its 'Mojo' a bit. It reminds me of the furniture you get in old B&B's, it’s tatty, dusty and a bit wobbly but you can tell it had some class back in its heyday. Here we headed out of town to see a Killing cave (again see the familiar words here to describe the Khmer Rouge years) where kids as young as 10 or 11 were forced to kill their own parents. A pre-Angkor temple, which influenced the architecture of Angkor Wat and some mahoosive fruit bats. These things were huge and there were hundreds of them all hanging in the trees near a pagoda. We were told they are a bit of a delicacy apparently and cheaper than chicken. We didn't eat one.

We had Moto drivers as our guides here. They were lovely guys, but unfortunately not the brightest. At one point Rachel was asked by her driver, "why is it dark in Cambodia when it's light on the other side of the world?" He just couldn't understand it. She had to try and answer using basic pigeon English while sat on the back of a speeding moped with no props at hand. Even Steven Hawking might have a bit of trouble explaining that one.
At one point my guides moped ran out of fuel in the middle of nowhere. So Rachel's driver had to go off and find some petrol. But unfortunately he didn’t take the money. So he used his fare (Rachel) as leverage and left her with the lady while he rode off to give us the petrol. I'm not too sure what she would have done with Rachel if the guy never came back, but she had a look that told me she probably would have cooked and ate her.

After that slight delay we then headed off to take a ride on a Bamboo train. Cambodia has a few train lines, but there are no passenger trains and only one cargo train running once a week. This means the tracks are pretty redundant. The enterprising people in the surrounding villages of Battembang though saw the lines as a quick and easy way of getting around, so they built small self assembly Bamboo trains to transport themselves from one village to the next. Take a look at the photo's to see what it's like, but they are small bamboo platforms with attached train wheels and a moped engine (although I think they used to be hand driven a few years ago). They are easily disassembled and reassembled, which is convenient because if a proper train is on the track they have to quickly get off and get out of the way. If two bamboo trains come head to head it's whoever has the lightest load that has to get off and take their train apart, which is very civilized don't you think?

After a couple of nights here (there wasn't a lot to do and the beer shortage was beginning to hit hard) we decided the way to get to Bangkok with the least amount of hassle would be to head back to Siem Reap and get a private bus all the way from there. So back on the bus we went....

We were only in Siem Reap one night to organize the bus and to eat the garliciest chicken kiev you can imagine at Molly Malones Irish pub. We then took a lovely 13hour bus journey across the border to Thailand. When filling in a visa application form at the border, why do they make you put the hotel you are staying while in Thailand? Even if you don’t know where you are staying and have nothing booked they get really annoyed and send you to the back of the line until you’ve filled in all the boxes. So you write 'The Mickey Mouse Hotel, Willy Wonka Drive, Bangkok' and they don't even bat an eyelid, it's bureaucracy gone mad I tells ya! Other than that we had no problems and we got to Bangkok bang on time and with it brought the curtain down on our Cambodian travels.

Like Vietnam, we wished we had longer than a month but I’m sure we will be back. Things are developing so fast here that we will have a whole new Cambodia to explore.

How different is Cambodia to Vietnam I here you shout? Well Cambodia is still a third world country for a start (80% of the population are farmers) and the roads and infrastructure in Vietnam is much better. Vietnam is also far better geared to deal with tourism (and the money making scams they can pull on tourists), although I’m sure Cambodia is catching up fast (I don't know if that's a good thing or not). Cambodia has many more cars and trucks on the road and the land is more parched (it was the middle of the dry season) where as Vietnam was pretty lush all the way down the length of the country with water being more abundant and better irrigation in the fields.
There are three things I've noticed that apply to both countries though. Firstly: There are dogs everywhere. Not just a few, a full-on Moses style plague of them. They're not homeless, the majority actually have owners, it's just that they let them out to wonder off and prowl around town on their own. Most are completely comatose and harmless because of the heat. They just lie there, whether that be on the path, beach or in the middle of the road. Others play and chase each other and some, well they do stuff that would even make the Dutch blush. We actually saw two dogs have sexual relations while they were crossing the street. Crossing the street! Cars had to actually stop to let them pass. How mad is that?! And all this in a country that doesn't like public displays of affection. No wonder they get eaten. It's not because they like the taste of dog, it's a punishment!
The second thing is the rubbish. They are prolific litter bugs (for want of a less childlike phrase). If there was an Olympic event of fly tipping they would be a shoe-in for gold and silver. With a serious shortage of landfill sites most of the household waste just gets left by the side of the road and sporadically burnt. Everywhere you go you see huge piles of carrier bags scattered all over the floor. They recycle glass and plastic bottles better than most (definately better than us) and they don't generate anywhere near as much waste as most western countries, but I’m sure it's not the most hygienic or eye pleasing way of getting rid of your rubbish. But that's not for me to sort out.
And lastly, in both countries we've seen some massive cockroaches, so big and numerous you feel you're in a 'Men in Black' film and huge scary Hornets and ants that want to bite your face off. Thus we have found we are both officially rubbish when it comes to dealing with large insects and quick moving reptiles. This doesn't bode well for when we get to Australia. A place where insects hang around in gangs at bus stops mugging old ladies. I'll be stocking up on the Deet insect repellent at Singapore duty free me thinks!

So this is it then. After a month in Cambodia we find ourselves in Thailand. Many more photos have been uploaded on to photobucket (Thank you Tracy and Duncan) if you wanna have a looksy:

http://s260.photobucket.com/albums/ii40/rachelandjoseph/?albumview=link

Bye for now,
Joe and Rachel.x

Newsflash!!!!!!!!!!: Beer shortage in Cambodia. Prices doubled. Send help.

Hello again,

Sadly this isn't going to be the most sophisticated or free flowing travel blog you will ever read. We are watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, so the mind isn’t totally focused on the task at hand I’m afraid. Therefore please forgive the constant shift from present to past tense, the poor sentence structure and below par spelling. Also please be aware, this blog entry is going to be colossus. You might want to print it off and spend a few hours reading it on the toilet. You can then show your appreciation by wiping your bottom with it if you so wish. I would.

Unfortunately we are so far behind we've been in Thailand for over a month and I’m just getting time to write about Cambodia now. I've browsed the web and there are some people who update their blogs everyday...EVERYDAY! These people need to get off the computers and into the Pub a bit more....and that leads me nicely to my beer collection. It's coming along at a steady pace (over 40 now I think), but sadly I still haven't put them up on Photobucket yet. But don't panic they will be up soon, I promise. There are some lovely beers in there (Beer Lao, Saigon Red, Anchor from Cambodia and Chang being some of the best) and there are some nasty tasting ones too, normally the stuff I’ve picked up from the supermarket for 5p. The Palm beer was probably the most undrinkable. Anyway Sorry I lost track for a minute, where was I? ah yes, sadly Cambodia was too long ago now so I won't bother describing all the hotels we stayed in or every meal we ate, every beer we drank or everyone we met, it would just take too long and be a bit boring. Plus I'd have to make most of it up because I can't remember it. We did travel everywhere by bus though. The most interesting journey we had was probably from Battambang to Siem Reap on one of the worse conditioned roads in Cambodia that you don’t need a 4x4 or Trail bike to get down (we took this road three times in four days). It was bumpy, slow, dusty and the bus almost toppled over a couple of times (if you’ve always wanted to know, buses really don’t like being up on two wheels). At one point the driver needed to pee so stopped by the side of the road. Half the bus (men, women and children) jumped out (not wanting to pay to use the toilet at the rest stop further on) and decided to go in to the field with him. One old guy sat next to me decided squat and take a dump right next to the bus. "It's the dry season you fool, there are no leaves hiding you from view!" I didn't shout. That reminds me, over here only shake hands with people with your right hand.

So, taking the bus, it has its’ flaws….firstly they sometimes do a pick-up service, which is handy, but once you are on the bus you will then spend the next 2 hours driving around the block picking up passengers from other guest houses. You will inevitably drive passed your old guest house at least 3 more times before you finally leave town. If the Aircon works, the dial will be set to minus 10degrees and at the end of the journey you will look like you have just come back from an ill advised Captain Scott expedition to the arctic. There will be eye gougingly awful Karaoke video's played on the TV and there will always be more passengers on the bus than there are seats. The less fortunate will sit in the aisle with the various bags of rice, fruit and veg they are transporting that day. At a Rest Stop, when he wants to leave, the driver will sound his horn then drive off. If you are unfortunate enough to still be in the toilet with your pants around your ankles don't expect them to wait for you. But for all it’s faults it’s easy and really is the only way to travel across country (unless you fancy taking one of the overloaded pick-up trucks (see the photo in the Kratie folder) or get a shared taxi with 7 other passengers plus the driver - 3 in the front seat and five in the back!). Plus it’s like the budgie........Cheap.

We got in to a nice little routine while traveling through Cambodia. We arrive in town by bus, find a guesthouse and hire either a local tuk tuk driver or a couple of Moto (moped taxi) riders to act as a guide and take us around for a day. Then in the evening find a nice bar or restaurant, have some food and a few beers while watching the sun go down…sure beats working any which way you look at it. After a day or two we would look at the map, buy a bus ticket and move on to the next town that took our fancy. Most towns or cities are pretty similar in some ways. All have a few grand (if a little battered) colonial buildings, all have a central market where the locals can buy their food, clothes and odds and ends, some roadside stalls selling the cheapest and freshest sea food money can buy and topped off with a few decent and a few not so decent local and western run bars. So on the surface they all look very similar, but when you get out and take a long look around they all have something that distinguishes it from the other towns. For example Kratie has its fresh water dolphins, where as Kampot has world famous pepper farms and Bokor Hill Station close by, Kampong Cham on the other hand has a Bamboo Bridge where as Battembang has the Bamboo trains. One thing though, no matter where we went or whatever we did stayed constant throughout the month we were there. The locals. In some of the towns they are the friendliest people you could ever wish to meet and they are so damn happy to see you (which is not something you can say about most European towns). Actually there are two things that stayed constant throughout the month. The other was the weather. It’s so damn hot. Real hot. And dry. Hot, dry and dusty. They call the dust ‘Cambodian snow’ and when a few trucks go speeding past it can turn in to a right Pea Souper. It's a proper choker as well and by the end of the day all your clothes are covered in a fine red dusting. I’ll tell you another thing as well…Gavin from Autoglass would have nightmares if he saw the amount of cracked windscreens on the buses and cars out here...don't they know they should get the chip fixed for free, before it turns in to a crack and then they have to replace the whole window!

Anyway, now I’ll go all Adam Hart-Davis on your ass and take you back six and fifty days ago, when the moon was fat, the rivers had run dry and we had just arrived in Phnom Penh.....

We stayed along the river front, hired a Tuk Tuk driver for the first day to take us out to the usual sights, Royal Palace (a large compound of temples and pagodas etc) Toul Sleng Museum which was a former school, but used by the Khmer Rouge as a prison. It was a pretty gruesome place, where they tortured prisoners until they signed fake confessions and then killed them. Apparently only 7 out of the 20,000 prisoners held there survived. Then we went up to the Killing fields (where they killed up to 100 people a day. Mostly beaten and hacked to death rather than shot to save the bullets.) I won't go on about the whole Cambodia/Khmer Rouge history thing as I’m sure you can all read up on it using the wonderful thing called the internet if you want to. But the guesthouse summed it up on the back of the door to our room in their 'tips and advice about the city': "Remember the Khmer Rouge killed off all the smart people". A quite depressing start to our time in Cambodia really, but something you have to go and see to understand the country and the Cambodian people. We then popped to the market to haggle for some t-shirts and a Khmer Scarf. Neither of us are born hagglers. In fact we are so crap it ends up being like that scene from Life of Brian where he wants to buy a fake beard. Our driver also wanted to take us to a shooting range where you can pick a live animal and kill it. I'm not talking endangered species here or even exotic animals, basically you just get to shoot a cow……….Who the hell wants to shoot a cow with an AK-47?!? It's not the most agile and nimble of creatures is it, and they're definately not the best at hide and seek. And another thing, it’s not something you can even boast about, “It almost got away from me, but I used the old ‘roll and shoot’ technique and it went down like a sack of spuds”. So I’ll say again, who the hell wants to shoot a cow!?!
We passed up his offer to go to the shooting range and instead went to look at a Wat on a hill, which was very Wat like, saw an elephant giving rides around the Wat, which was very elephant like and then went for a beer and play some pool in the Hope and Anchor, very English pub like.

There’s not a lot I can say about Phnom Penh. It’s pretty much like any other city in that you can feel like you’re just one of a million faces in a crowd. It had a slight unsettling edginess to it when the sun went down, but by no means did we have a miserable time there, but we couldn’t see anything that we would miss or want to come back for.

After a few days we wanted to get away from the city and head for the beach, so we jumped on a bus to Sihanoukville. Down on the small stretch of Cambodian coast this place is rather ratty looking town with a few beaches of varying quality. At first we stayed with a lovely family in a small guesthouse (although we never saw any other guests). Our bedroom was right next to their front room, which sort of made us part of the family for the few days we were there. It was on a quiet section of the coast between Sokha and Serendipity beaches and near a very nice bar attached to the bungalow resort next door, which we felt inclined to frequent regularly. We then moved up in to the very noisy Monkey Republic bungalows in the heart of the ‘action’ in town, just off the back of Serendipity beach.
Unfortunately the main problem I can see with this place is two fold: The foreigners who have frequented Sihanoukville over the years (mainly idiots) and the locals who harass you every 5 minutes. You can’t have a relaxing read of a book without being interrupted by people wanting to braid your hair, give you a massage, sell you a sarong or a necklace or some beads or fruit to eat or a hammock to lie in, or sell you sunglasses, even if you are already wearing a pair, some want money to pull the hair out of your legs or arms or even cut your toe nails. And it’s not just adults it’s kids who are persistent and a few get abusive if you don’t buy anything off them. Then sadly there are the beggars (this is a touchy subject as there are those (handicapped mostly) that really do need to beg to feed themselves (there’s not a lot of government welfare support), but there are others who actually make more money begging in a week than some people (including police officers) do working for a month…not the best base for a fair and uncorrupt society!). I’m glad most are being enterprising and working for a living, but because it’s so full on, every second you are on the beach, it means you can’t relax, which is surely what going to the beach is all about? We also heard a couple of stories while we were there of tourists getting mugged by locals with screwdrivers, which doesn’t fill you with confidence about the place.
There are a couple of quiet beaches you can go to get away from all the hubbub; we particularly liked the small public stretch of a mainly private Sokha beach owned by luxury hotel. It’s quiet and you could have that small section just to yourself to relax and have a swim.

We also took a boat trip to see a mangrove forest in Ream National Park (move over Keith Richards, this is the rock ‘n’ roll life we’re leading now. We sleep all night and visit forests to look at different fauna by day!) With a non-profit tour company, who uses the money raised to run a school for under privileged children. The tour was pretty dull and uneventful (Rachel got attacked by a huge army of ants. You can actually see their teeth biting into you, not pleasant) but we saw the school and the kids, plus they showed us how they extract the bio diesel fuel from the cooking fat which they collect from the local restaurants. Quite informational, in a Discovery channel kind of way.

After a pretty underwhelming time in Sihanoukville we headed off down the road to Kampot/Kep.
Kampot is home of the famous Kampot pepper farms and Kep is a quiet old beach resort which fell in to disrepair when the Khmer Rouge moved in and decimated it. It’s a sorry looking place that’s seen better and richer days (we visited mid-week and it was almost desolate), but there is a hint of regalness, which hopefully will come back to the place. I hope so because it’ll be a darn sight more attractive proposition than Sihanoukville down the road.
Kampot is a small town running along the Teuk Chhou River, with Kampot pepper farms dotted around the province as well as all the other types of farms you usually get in this type of temperate country. Apparently Kampot pepper is one of the finest peppers and used in the fancy restaurants in Paris, or so the book reads. Our Tuk Tuk driver was a friendly young chap who had only been a tuk tuk driver for a few days (before he was a moto taxi driver). He used his bosses Tuk Tuk to drive us out to a few interesting sights for the afternoon and it turned out in to a great day out. He was even going to take us to his family home to have some tea. In search of an elusive pepper farm we went down roads that were definitely not Tuk Tuk country. At points we had to get out and push it up the hill, and one time get out and actually kick the wheel back on the axel. We also stopped at the Phnom Chhnork cave, which was very cave-like (the friendly young kids hanging around follow you up and act as ‘guides’, whether you like it or not to be honest, but we didn’t mind as they were quite amusing. In turn we gave a few thousand Reil to share between them) before driving us on to Kep for some lunch and a beer.
At the end of a few of these trips around the country, we realized the best part wasn’t always the sights we had set out to see, but the getting there. It's a relaxing life, sat in the back of a Tuk Tuk, driving through small rural villages, and then parking up to chat to the driver about Cambodia and his life over a few cold beers in a restaurant. Lovely stuff.

The second day, with Rachel being ill, I headed up on a tour to Bokor Hill Station. A deserted 1920’s, French built, Casino Resort that sits, unsurprisingly, on top of Bokor Hill. It was deserted when the French withdrew from Cambodia in the 40’s. The retreating Khmer Rouge also fought the Vietnamese here (One side shooting from the Casino and the other returning fire from the church a few hundred meters away). Gamblers, when they had lost everything, used to jump to their death off the back of the Casino down the mountain. It’s a ghostly place when the mist rolls in off over the top of the mountain. A few landmines are still dotted around here though and soldiers walked passed holding a sign saying ‘Danger. Mines’ (at first glance I thought it said Danger Mouse, which amused me for the rest of the day).
On the journey back to town on the back of the pickup truck, we all got talking and the subject inevitably got on to football. As I mentioned Swindon, the guy next to me sat up surprised and with what must be at least a million to one chance said he was a Swindon fan too. I then found out he lives in Cricklade. Since then we have overheard a couple of other travelers from Swindon. Isn’t it encouraging knowing we are all getting out and seeing the world?! It brings a small tear to this old Swindonian's eye.

After a day or two we decided to move over and see some of the east side of the country. To do that we had to head back to Phnom Penh, so we did. In Phnom Penh we went to the Foreign correspondents club (fcc) for dinner and beers, which was very nice indeed before heading up to Kratie.

We found ourselves another MP3 player down for this part of the trip, as the last standing MP3 player decided it didn’t like the songs we had put on in Sianoukville so deleted them, and just for good measure, some of the old ones as well. It left us with what seemed like an album titled ‘50 off the worse songs to listen to on any bus journey, ever’. We were left with Bon bloody Jovi for 5 hours (this came off Duncan's computer by the way). When it's a choice between Bon Jovi (thanks again Duncan) and the TV showing cringe worthy blue screen Westlife style karaoke videos, with a very heavy heart you have to choose the Jovi. If there was a third option of gouging out my eardrums and letting spiders eat my eyeballs I wouldn't have even hesitated, but you can never find a man-eating spider and a spoon when you need one. To be fair it wasn’t just Jovi on there, we also got to listen to 'Dude looks like a lady' by Aerosmith about 30 times. The tune is so drummed in to my head, I now find myself singing it in a stupidly high pitched voice at inconvenient and unfortunate moments (normally standing at a urinal or ordering a beer from an unnaturally large barman).

Anyway, the main thing here we wanted to see were the fresh water Irrawaddy dolphins at O Kampi and as a bonus Sambor, the largest Wat in Cambodia. The photos don’t do them justice (it’s bloody difficult to take a photo of a dolphin. It’s not like in Flipper, they don’t come up on to the boat and start juggling with beach balls), but we saw loads of them. They don’t jump out the water, but have to raise their head out every 20seconds or so to breathe. Some came pretty close to the boat and although they weren’t doing much apart from swim around you find yourself quite transfixed by them.
Heading away from the water we visited the Wat, that was like any other Wat really, but a bloody big one. Lovely inside with the walls covered in colourful paintings which told Buddhist stories. The guys in there couldn’t really speak English, but they were nice and let us sit down with them and browse through a book about Buddhism. On the way back to the hotel, we also went up to a meditation temple on top of a hill. That sentence pretty much sums up how interesting it was. Not very.

From here we headed south back down to Kampong Cham. On the way we stopped at a rest stop and saw a lady selling deep fried spiders, which in Snoul (a small town in the same area) is apparently a delicacy. We didn’t eat one.

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