So Evan left you on a bus bound for Battambang ( correct spelling however many rude connotations Evan manages to create!) The road was bumpy, and this is a huge understatement, I have never ended a bus journey so coevered in red dust but some clever soul left a window open. Stayed in antoher guest house recommended by our dutch travel gurus and took a little wander round the town. We saw maybe 4 different western couples the whole time here, it's great when you go to a place that functions as somethin other than a tourist place, for a start you don't have to bat off tuk tuk drivers every 5 minutes. It's crazy to think this is cambodia's 2nd biggest city as it's sleepy to say the least, also very hot.

On our second day there we took a moto tour both on the back of motos ( luxury , not 2 of us plus bags on one!) and this was very interesting. My driver was Bath, and as we drove through little villages, fruit plantations and rivers, I learnt lots about the culture and his life. We saw at least 10 wedding parties as we went, it's the seasons so I I learnt about weddings, he had a Cambodian phrase for every occasions. We were talkin about all the fruit available here and what we don't get in the UK and about durians " Cambodian people say is like eating garlic ice cream in public toilet" they are an acquired taste! Of why although everyone lives in a 2 room wooden house they also have a large sattelite dish and/or TV aerial on top of the roof " ask a cambodian why he has small house, big tv, he say Because I already have enough children"

We visited a Wat on a hill, where they was a cave filled with the reamins of people killed by the khmer rouge. We also visited a small mini angkor wat type temple at the top of 380 steps. All the way up, we were fanned and given a Khmer language lesson by a middle aged lady who pointed at thins and barked " in khmer" until we had the pronunciation exactly right. After which Evan relaxed with a sugar cane juice which they press on every street corner round here.

All the time we were learning about the khmer way of life and aobut Bath's life. his family were rurual and so escaped too much loss through the khmer rouge time, he lost a brother only, which is pretty good going for a guy in his mid 30s. 70% of the population of Cambodia is under 30 and about 40% is under 16 which gives you an idea of the potential problems cambodia is going to face as this generation grows up, and why there are so many street kids everywhere. You have to admire the cambodians though, there are lots of initiatives to help these kids, and craft workshops run by disabled people and so on. Bath told us some hair raising tails about playing with land mines as a child - they are great to fish with apparently and also to confuse the vietnamese army by exploding them to make them think the enemy was approaching.

We also saw lots of vans of political party members with megaphones and flags as the elexctions are soon. I won't say too much about that though for fear of being slammed in jail.

We stopped at a school and said hi to the kids who were tending their vege garden at break time. We also stopped to give sweets ( yes yes I know dental hygiene but hte sthop had run out of pens) to some village kids. ( can you imagine waltzing into ao school in england unannoucned, chatting to the kids, taking their photos and then wanderin off to give some other kids some sweets!! ) In the afternoon we also stopped at a family's house where they grow allsorts of fruit ( you'll be surprised when you see the photos of how pineapples grow - tip - it's not on trees!!) and sampled their banana rice wine - yum. I also had a go at helping the girls make rice cakes yum yum yum and we had a nice chat about premiership football with one of the guys there ( NB for anyone going travelling, premiership football is the universal leveller, they may live in a one room house but they can tell you their favourite liverpool player and why Chelsea have too much money for transfers...)

We got back to town partially by Bamboo train. This train if you can call it that runs on the same track as the battambang to phnom penh train - the only train in the country. It's basically 2 axels with a wooden platform placed on top and a fishing boat engine attached. The engine starts and off you speed down the track. The only drawback is there are no sidings.... so if you encounter someone coming the other way one of you has to get off, dismantle your train and wait by the verge. We had one of these stops, and also another one when we had to wait for the train in front to unload a few strapped in cows off on a day trip somewhere nice ( hmmm.)

Bath delivered us safely back to our guest house and I showed him some photos of the english countryside on the internet as he had been interested to know how it differed from the cambodian countryside. Hard to know where to begin with that one....

had our second meal at the white rose, very cheap and very delicious and probably one of 2 places one can eat out in Battambang then the next day we were on another bus to Bangkok. Met a lovely couple from Clitheroe on the bus which helped pass the time, and gave each other moral support finding our way through the customs at the border. All I can say is that the cambodian and thai sides of the border could not be more different. Poipet is little more than a shanty town with a few posher hotels being built... get to thailand and ti's all shops, food stalls, everyone in 100% western clothing, (VIP buses with toilet and video which plays something other than local kareoke DVDs.(yeah the DVD's were Bad Boys, and XXX 2 with Ice cube supposedly the perfect fighting machine and navy seal, but a bit fat and cumbersome, pretty bad film...) We were very sad to leave Cambodia and here we are again in Thailand.

We're currently exploring the islands but I shall leave that for next time.