I thought I'd better update this again before it had been far too long and I forgot it all!

We moved on from Phnom Penh after bumming around for a couple more days sorting out visas and visiting temples and museums (and the post office where lots of monkeys were hanging around). On the saturday, we got up nice and early to catch a bus to a southern beach town called Sihanoukville. Four hours of dodgy cambodian carry-on type films and karaoke! But we managed to find ourselves a cool place to stay for $3 each a night and then headed off for a bit of a wonder. The beach was swarming with people selling stuff and begging. We stopped off for a sandwich in one of the beach bars and got countless offers for bracelets, manicures, massages (one woman just would not go away!), lobsters, fruit, headbands, hair removal by threading and lots of people begging for money (and even the food off your plate). One girl sat and talked to us for a bit about what there is to do in sihanoukville and also told us about how she and her sister go to school for an hour a day in the mornings and then sell stuff on the beach the rest of the day, but her brother gets to go all day.

In the evening we saw a couple of the guys from the halong bay trip (over one month later, and they still keep popping up everywhere!) and we also met a couple of really nice people who we all ended up going to the beach bars with together. the alcohol was so cheap, they were practically giving it away (in fact, they were for a lot of the night) and Jen and I ended up not going home until sunrise...minus our flip flops!

We decided to have a proper day on the beach the next day, and we went prepared for all the hawkers...but still managed to give a lot of money away. And we didn't find our flip flops either! The girl who had sat with us the day before came and chatted to us again, and pointed out the boys who go round looking for money/cameras/phones to steal. Some of them were so blatant, coming round sitting right beside you or laying their head beside you to try and get into your pockets. Luckily we'd only bought a bit of money with us each, that we managed to spend very quickly, so we didn't have much to worry about. There was one little girl there who only must have been about 4 years old, trying to sell bracelets. The only English she knew was '2 for a dollar' and when you said no 'how much you give me?'. She looked exhausted and laid on my sunbed, under the parasol, to try and get out the sun. I bought her a bottle of water, which she drank incredibly quickly, and stayed there for about 45 mins before her sister (who looked the grand old age of 6 or 7) came and told her to move on.

Monday, we had a boat ticket booked for 'bamboo island', a tiny little island about an hour off the coast where the only thing to do is lounge about on the beach...and woke up to torrential rain. We decided to brave it, put on our ponchos, and made our way down to the beach path to try and find the bar where we had to catch the boat. All the way down we had constant calls of 'tuk tuk?', which was very tempting but it was only a little way so we refused them all. Half way there and the path started to look more like a river than a walkway. But we still decided to carry on. Then Jen lost her flip flop and it was quickly washed away, much to the amusement of the tuk tuk drivers whose lift we'd refused. But we still decided to carry on. Once we got to the beach front, we asked a few people if they knew where the bar was only to be told we wouldn't be able to get a boat in this weather. But we still decided to carry on (more to find out if we could get a refund!). We eventually found the place, to be told the boat was leaving in 5 mins. So we walked waist deep into the sea (so much for keeping dry under the ponchos) to hop onto the longtail boat. the journey took double the amount of time it should have and it was so rough - it was the first and only time so far on this journey that I was completly convinced I was going to die! But we made it to the island...only for me to fall in the water whilst getting out of the boat! Luckily I didn't have my bag on my back at this point, but I did manage to break another pair of sunglasses. I've lost count of the number of items Jen and I have lost or broken between us since we've been together!

Fortunatly, it didn't rain the whole time we were there and we spent the afternoon lounging about on the beach and in hammocks and drinking fruit shakes (between the hours of 6pm-9pm as this was the only time when both the restaurant was open and the island had electricity!). The night was spent in a damp bed, listening to more rain and taking a 4 am trip to a tree-frog infested toilet! The boat journey back the next day was much calmer and nicer! But we were actually a little bit sad to be leaving as you did truly feel like you were on 'The Beach' or something (but without all the fighting, sickness and dying).

Next morning, we set off for Kampot. The main reason we headed here was to take a day trip up to the spooky deserted hill top station in the nearby national park. Unfortunately the road up to the park was closed for maintenance and the hill top station was being renovated. So the only way to get up to it was by a 2 day trek through the park, which didn't sound like a fun thing to do in the rainy season. So we booked ourselves a day trip of the area around kampot for the following day, and then set out for a 'quiet night' of dinner on the riverside. We ended up at a nice little bar, where the man working there jumped on his bike to get Jen wine when she asked for it and they'd ran out. I felt obliged to have some after that...and then we ended up going to the local nightclub called 'Alaska'. We were the only westerners in there and it was the strangest club I've ever been to. The music ranged from trance, to ballads, to some wierd party dance songs (which we got caught up in the middle of, not having a clue what we should be doing) and then hardcore hip hop. In that order. But the locals loved it all and really went for it with the dancing.

Next day we got up nice and early and set off for our tour in our little tuk tuk. First stop was a cave with a temple inside. The ride there was almost as interesting as the cave itself, as we passed through little villages where everybody waved and shouted hello and the scenery was amazing. A few kids showed us around the cave and took us into an inside chamber full of bats before showing us the way to climb out again - hard work, but they easily scrambled up and down the rocks. Then we went to a pepper farm (where they grow the famous kampot pepper) before heading to the little seaside town of kep. It was full of colonial mansions that had been deserted during the khmer rouge reign and left to rot.

After the tour, we went for some delicious chocolate fudge pie and tea at a cafe called 'sisters II'. The lady running it explained to us that 'sisters I' was in Phnom Penh and was ran by somebody she grew up with in an orphanage. She also explained that the cafes take on the 18 year olds who have to leave the orphange but who can't get jobs anywhere because they haven't been to high school so that they can get some experience. She was really passionate about what she was doing and started crying at one point because she was so happy with how her life is now and what she is doing compared to life after she left the orphanage. So, when we left for Phom Penh again the next day (so Jen could sort her Laos visa) we decided to have lunch at 'sisters I'. We spent the rest of the day shopping at the russian market and relaxing at our guesthouse, watching the sunset over the lake and bats skimming above the water.

Next day, it was back on the bus again. This time we were headed to Battambang. We managed to find a really really nice place to stay, it seems like real luxury as it has a TV, toilet roll and white sheets that actually look white! All for just $5 each a night.We spent the rest of the day getting our bearings, having a look around the market, and eating dinner at the night market by the riverside.

Today we went on a motorbike tour around Battambang. We got taken to a mountain first, where the 'killing caves' were located. This was one of the many places the Khmer Rouge killed people and hid their bodies by throwing them down a skylight in the really deep cave in the mountain. It was really shocking and sad to hear one of our motorbike drivers talk about his experiences during the khmer rouge period. He was 11 and living in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge took over the city and forced everybody to leave, and that's when he moved to Battambang. Then he got seperated from his family as they all got split into the different work camps (the camps were all organised by gender and age) and both his sisters and his dad died within a year due to starvation, hard labour and completely useless medicine that the khmer rouge made as they did not want to be reliant of foreign imports. He said he still got to see his mother even though they were in different camps, but he was never allowed to stay with her. He talked about how everybody was so hungry because the rations of rice were so small so everybody just ate everything they could find, including poisonous mushrooms and berries, and he said he got tortured for stealing food from the store. They were also encouraged to tell tales on eachother in weekly meetings - for which they recieved extra rations if they pointed out an 'internal enemy'. He said he got really sick on numerous occasions, and if you weren't working, your rations were halfed, which meant in the hospital he got even less food and also meant, although his mother had permission to visit him, she might not have been able to survive on the megre amount of rice she would have been allowed there. Eventually his mum got sick and died as well, so when the khmer reign ended, he had no family left and set up on his own in Battambang. It was really interesting to hear him say that, although he felt they were victims in the boys camp, they were also killers because they regularly told tales on eachother to get extra food and everybody hunted down and killed the chief of the area when the khmer reign was over. It was also really interesting to hear his opinions on the trails, as he seemed quite angry that it had taken so long and that only 5 people were being prosecuted and only for the crimes that took place between the years of '75-'79. He also thought it was bad that so few people knew anything about the trials and that the kids are taught other countries' history at school but nothing about what has happened in Cambodia.

We went through into the cave and there was a stupa with all the bones they'd found. We were told that they were still finding bones, that some were even dug up last week, and that, unlike at S-21 prison, there were no records at all of who had been taken and killed there.

After that, our motorbike driver went to wait back at the bottom of the mountain, whilst we explored the temple at the top, with a little bit of help from a massive khmer family who could only speak very basic English.

Then we got back on the bikes, and headed out to another temple. This one was from the 8th century...and was at the top of 359 steps! We had a gaggle of children climbing with us with fans, trying to teach us a bit of Khmer as we went (but we can remember none of it!).

After a spot of lunch, where we sat with a pig beneath our feet and where Jen really wished she hadn't ordered chicken beacuse they killed it in front of her, we headed off on the bikes again and stopped off at another temple. This time though, the main attraction were the hundreds of huge fruit bats hanging in the trees. After a few pictures, we hopped back on the bikes and to...the bamboo train. This is basically 2 wheels on an axle on which they place a bamboo carriage (the closest thing to a flying carpet I think I'll ever experience) and a motor. And it goes pretty damn fast! It's also very bumpy. We met one carriage coming the other way but it was them who had to dismantle their carriage and take it off the tracks to let us pass because we had 2 bikes on ours (it's decided by whoever has the most people or the heaviest load). It was so much fun.

So now we're back at the hotel, absolutly exhausted but clean after 2 showers to wash off all the dust and muck! I'm doing another cooking course tomorrow and then it's off to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat the next day.

Miss you all, and hopefully I'll be able to put pictures up soon!

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