I thought I'd not really been up to much in the past week or so but now going to type this up I realise I've done loads.

The cooking course I'd signed myself up to in Battambang was really good. I was the only one doing it (which apparently was quite usual) and it started with a trip round the market to buy the ingredients and to explain things such as why the fish are kept alive until they're sold (to keep them fresh in a place with no fridges) and what the ladies walking round with the big baskets were selling (ant eggs apparently). Then we hopped on a bike to go to the house of the person that ran the cooking school. At this point in time it was the man of the house who was doing most of the teaching, but he explained to me this was just until his wife, who was doing most of the demonstrating, had learnt enough English to teach the lessons herself. He also explained that they used to run the house as homestay to tourists but they got lots of threats from guesthouse owners and so decided to give it up. I was shown how to cook traditional khmer curry (which is much like the massaman curry I ate a lot of in Thailand. Khmer cooking is a lot less spicy that Thai as well, which made me very happy!), fish amok (the national dish, which is like a thick curry placed in a banana leaf with coconut milk and steamed) and beef luk lak (which is like an oyster sauce stir fry served with a delicious pepper sauce on the side). I was also shown how to make the curry paste from scratch and the coconut milk (no, they don't just get it from inside the coconut, it involves placing dessicated coconut in a cloth and squeezing lots of water through it). Both of which were good stress relieving fun. The fact that the cooking course took place in somebodys home made it quite different from the other cooking courses I'd done. There were kids sitting and watching the tv (some lived there, some didn't!), they all sat round the table with me to eat what I'd made and I was offered lots of snake wine to drink! Apparently the guy takes it as medicine for a bad back. There was also a tea towel on the side which started to move. Then the niece of the family picked it up to show me that there were two baby squirrels inside that had been found in a tree they'd cut down on her uncle's farm. When all the cooking and eating was finished, the heavens opened up for its daily downpour, so they guy put on a dvd documentry about the bamboo train that he'd helped to make. It was all in French, and apparently made by German filmmakers, and the guy had been an English translator for them. He was very proud of it, and told me that he'd used some of the money he'd made from it to buy blood for one of the ladies in the documentry because she needed a cesarian.It was all very interesting, and well worth the $10 it cost me.I was told to take a portion of the amok back for Jen so she could see what she'd missed out on by not doing the course.

Next day, Jen and I took the bus to Siem Reap, a small town slightly north of Battambang where everybody stays to go and see the temples of Angkor. We ended up in a place just outside of the main square of town which was really cheap and nice, but some of the people that worked there were a bit wierd and creepy! We booked our tuk tuk to the temples for the next day and went to get some tasty pumpkin and coconut soup from one of the delicious restaurants near the old market.

Our tuk tuk driver picked us up at 5am so that we could get to Angkor Wat in time to watch the sunrise. It was pretty stunning watching the sun come up behind the grand 12 century temple. Then we went for a bit of an explore inside before moving on to see a handful of the hundreds of temples in the area. Out of the 9 we saw my favourites were Bayon, which had lots of totem heads built into it and Th Prohm, which is referred to as the 'jungle temple' because of the tree roots and greenery that has wormed its way in between the bricks and towers. It's also known as the 'Lara Croft' temple because that's were parts of the film were shot. Jen injured herself trying to do her best Lara Croft pose much to the amusement of the nearby Japanese tourists. My camera did manage to run out of battery quite early on in the day though, which is pretty typical of my camera luck so far on this trip! After seeing all the temples we'd planned to see, we went over to the place where they do teathered hot air balloon rides to see Angkor Wat from the air. Unfortunatly, it was too cloudy, which they'd decided meant there was going to be a storm soon (they were right!) so they'd stopped sending the balloon up. So, after about 9 or 10 hours of templing, we decided we'd seen enough ruins and climbed enough incredibly dangerous steep stairs, and headed back to the guesthouse where we spent the rest of the night eating and finally getting to watch 'The Killing Fields'.

The next day was me and Jen's last day together before she went to head up into Laos from the south and I went back into Thailand to decide what my next move was going to be. So we decided to spend it doing what we seem to do best together - spending money shopping and eating a lot of good food. We walked round the many markets before going to a cafe called the Blue Pumpkin and lounging on the huge white sofa bed type thing they had upstairs and drinking lots of fruit shakes and herbal tea. The evening was much of the same, we went to the night market, which was really pretty, and had a few cocktails at the bar there, before moving onto to a place called Red Piano, where they did really good food and nice Angelina Jolie cocktails, named after her because she apparently made it up when she dined there. On our way to the next bar, we got accosted by a group of kids who we ended up buying baby formula for them to take back home. By the time we made it to the next bar, it was pretty deserted and we spent most of the time sitting and chatting the staff there who told us about their families and the fact that people in Cambodia don't traditionally celebrate birthdays, they all get a year older when the new year starts in April.

Next morning was a bit of a panic, as Jen's bus turned up an hour earlier than she was told and she had spent all her money on baby formula the night before so she had to be driven by the wierd guy at the guesthouse to an atm and then to the bus station, all the way being given an earful by the guy. My bus to Bangkok wqas a lot less painful then I was expecting, and I managed to find a little place just off Khao San Road to stay whilst I decided where I was going to head next. Eventually I decided I would head up to Laos again and do Vang Vieng and Vientiane there, as these, along with Luang Prubang that I did before I got ill, are the main places to go in Laos. But the bank opening times in Thailand meant I couldn't leave quite as soon as I wanted for Laos, as I needed some dollars to pay for my visa there and the banks were closed saturday and sunday. So I decided to head on an overnight bus to Nong Khai on Sunday night, which is the town bordering Laos, and the plan was to get some dollars there Monday morning before heading to Laos the same day. But, when I got there, the place was so nice I decided to stay a night there. It was a really nice guesthouse by the Mekong River and served really good local food. I went to a strange sculpture park that day as well that was built by a bit of a crazy man who said that none of the volunteers that helped him with the huge detailed sculptures had been trained in any way, they worked from divine talent and inspiration. He couldn't really make up his mind if he was buddhist or hindu, had his body stored in the third floor of some wierd building he designed in the sculpture park and also believed he was half snake. Yep, half man, half snake. The sculptures were pretty awe inspiring though, the pictures I took just doesn't do them justice.

Next day, I crossed the border into Laos and started a bit of a nightmare journey to Vang Vieng which all started to go wrong when I misunderstood a tuk tuk driver and ended up paying him to wait two hours for me whilst I went to get lunch in the belief he'd reserved me a seat on a minibus and culminated in the 'VIP' bus (read: rickety old minibus with not enough seats and air con that does not work) hitting a cow. The cow was fine but the bus, not so fine. But just about managed to make it the last 15 mins into Vang Vieng. I managed to find a place to stay but I had a bit of a guesthouse swap this monring (the first place was very nice, but too expensive, deserted and the people that ran it couldn't speak one single word of English, so I had no idea what time check out was or what I was paying for and what I wasn't). Apart from that, I've spent most of the rest of the day watching Friends in the numerous cafes in town that play episodes of it all day everyday. There's two places that also play family guy. And one that plays the Simpsons. And apart from that it's all Friends Friends Friends. Tomorrow....tubing time!

xxxxx