After enduring yesterdays crazy rain and being stuck in the 10p gym and our $4 a night room, we are now hot, sweaty and covered in mud and dust after a hard days cycyling in Battambang! I think most people take the easy route and get a tuk tuk to show them the sites....nope not us, rickety old bikes with baskets are much more our style! We set off at about 10 this morning on our mission to ride Cambodia's bamboo train. Lonely Planet told us it was only 3K out of the centre, more like 13K! Although it took a lot longer than we thought the cycle to the 'Train Station' was great. More or less every single little kiddie we saw on the way shouted hello, they are so sweet! We stopped to ask directions and one little cutie said, ''hello, what is your name'', her English was perfect! I told her my name and she told me hers was Lynn, bless her! :oD Honestly we were amazed at how clean and friendly the little Villages we passed were, until then when we had been out of the city things seemed to take a turn for the worst. I could quite easily cycle out there again tomorrow and spend hours with all the little ones! Angelina Jolie eat your heart out! ;o)

So I know you are all wondering what a bamboo train is!? It's basically a wooden frame covered with bamboo, this rests on two barbell-like metal bogies (we only know the name bogie because of Lonely Planet!), throw on a little engine and your ready to take a ride down the tracks! The Cambodians have used them for years to ship rice and vegetables to and from villages. We arrived on our bikes, chained them up and got our own personal train ride. There is only one track so if another train starts coming towards you one of you have to get off and lift your train off the tracks. I don't know why but everytime someone came towards us we had to get off. Thankfully we didn't have to help to lift the train off! Half way into the ride we stopped off at small village and the local kids made us rings and a bracelet out of banana leaf, bless them! Pretty much all of the Cambodians are so poor but seeing them helping themselves by building/making things to sell, or working in one of the cafes/restaurants that have been set up to teach them to cook etc is so heartwarming. Battambang seems to be doing so much for their community, a few of the restaurants we've eaten in have locals being trained and working in them, and give money to local childrens orphanges etc. It's good to know all our money isn't going into some hungry Brit/Americans pocket! Although there seems to be so many happy stories going on there are still so many beggers, adults and children. It's so sad to see people who can't get jobs because they've had limbs amputated because of land mines, or kids begging for food from plates when people have finished eating. It's even more sad when mothers are pushing kids towards you telling them to ask you for money, or when your pretty much sure people are just using kids to make themselves money. Your just never sure who is for real and who isn't, and you can't help everyone.

After our last blog about arriving in Phonm Pehn and being accausted by the two guys outside our guesthouse we didn't really come across much more begging there, thank god! Instead of being saddened by that we decided to visit the S21 Prison Museum and the Killing Fields. It was such a moving day seeing the actual beds prisoners had been tortured on, blood still on the floors and the mass graves of so many people. Crazy to think that such awful things happened here as close as the 70's. The tuk tuk ride out to the Killing Fields totally opened our eyes (and nostrils) to what some people in Cambodia live like. There was rubbish everywhere and the smell was literally making me gag! A total contrast to outside of the city in Battambang, and the centre of Phonm Penh where some of the hotels, restaurans and bars wouldn't look out of place in London. As usual in Asia the traffic was mental, honestly we thought the Thai's carried a lot of stuff on their scooters....seeing the Cambodian's carrying double beds on theirs definitely wins first prize!

To cheer us up we finished off the day with us getting some red wine, yummy, and visiting the shooting range to watch Dean shooting a full magazine round of a AK47. In typical South East Asian style they hassled us to buy more rounds, even offering us to shoot a rocket launcher for $350! Really, can you not see we're poor travellers!? ;o)

It's off to Siem Reap tomorrow, hopefully we won't see any more guys on scooters putting each other in headlocks to get onto a mini bus like we did in Phonm Penh!

Lots of Love

Chelle & Dean xxx