Today we travelled in the bus with the first stop being the Don Deak Local Market. Not another local market you say; well, this one was a bit different in that it was the first one we had visited to have Prahok fish paste commonly known as Cambodian Blue Cheese. It is fish which has been crushed and salted and then fermented. Gagging material, this is used in a quite a bit of Cambodian cooking and no doubt we had it in some of the dishes we had eaten. You definit...

Our alarm woke us at 0345 and this was followed by a backup phone call from hotel reception. We all showed up in the lobby on time at 0430 and directed into 5 Tuk Tuks (2 in each) for a half hour ride to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise and reflections from one of the pools – in fact the only pool as the others have no water in them during the dry season. Fantastic views although the sunrise was a bit subdued as there was some cloud cover but that did not less...

We parted company with our local guide and driver last night and met up with their replacements who had driven down from Siem Reap in the morning. Bus was a bit smaller so we couldn't all have a window each but it was fine. We had about 150kms to travel today and the first stop was a 12th century stone bridge affectionately known as the Naga Bridge as it had a 9 headed Naga (snake) at the entrance. The largest vehicle allowed across now is the Tuk Tuk. No mortar ...

Today we set off for Siem Reap by road. This will be done over 2 days with today covering about 200kms. There is enough room in the bus for each of us to have a window. There would not be much snoozing on the bus as the roads were fairly rough with much of it was being upgraded. We were told that travelling on Cambodia's roads could involve three types of massage – "normal" road = chicken massage, moderately bumpy road = water buffalo massage and severely b...

Started the day with a trip to the Central Market. Morning is a good time to go before the food gets really ripe. Then off to the Royal Palace which had a large number of ceremonial buildings and stupas. The King (and his mother) were in residence so there was one area of the grounds that we were not able to visit. The present King is 62 and unmarried so at the moment the next heir will be his brother. One of the buildings had a solid silver floor. When the coun...