We are now in Battambabg, the second largest city and south west of Siem Reap. We arrived by boat the day before yesterday, which was an experience in itself, & hours on a tin roof and we were pretty fried but the sights along the way made it all worthwhile (photos to follow when the internet is a bit faster) We saw many floating villages, consisting of small wooden huts built onto floating platforms and seemingly miles from any where, they appeared from behind the vegitation as we wound our way through small passage ways and crossed huge sections of lakes. The children were so excited to see the boat and waved madly at us until we waved back, many were fishing in little boats or just splashing about in the water.

We recovered from the trip here on the first night and then set off on a tour of some of the loal attrractions the next day. My motorbike driver was called Yeung, spoke very good English and was skilled at chatting to me, gesturing madly with his left hand and negotiating the pot holes at the same time - a little scary to start with but he was very good at travelling safely down the dusty road. They call the dust Cambodian snow and it gets every where! We looked like oompa lumpas by the end of the day!! There was a n English couple with us and they were good fun, which made the day even better.

We started off by climbing up a quite steep path to get to the top of a mountain - seriously! At the top there were some temples and also the killing caves where many Cambodians were tortured and killed by the Khme Rouge, our guide gave us some history of the regime which had involved his realatives being brutally murdered in one of the caves. It was very sad and quite horrific to see all the skulls and scraps of cloth from the victims clothes, you find it difficult to believe this friendly nation could have been so torn apart such a short while ago. Another remenant from the war were two big machine gus which the boys of course had to pose for photos with!

After this we headed back down for some shade and lunch at the base of the mountain - they have huge grasshoppers over here, apparently quite tasty, and a little boy had caught one which he showed to us and then chased his friend down the road with, very funny!

Next was a big tree home to hundreds of fruit bats, Elliot had a mini adventure of his own on the way there when he was abandoned by his driver with a small Cambodian family in the midle of nowhere! The bike had a flat tyre and he had gone to get it fixed but left Elliot with the family for about 15 minutes, none of them spoke English but after a bit of a long silence just grinning at each other, and the help of the guide book he managed to communicate a few things and left them his sunglasses as a momento. I imagine they found it all rather bizarre, he gets funny looks just walking in the cities!

Later we visited a fruit farm which also made rice wine, very strong stuff! They showed us around and then gave us fresh fruit and some other things they grew! After that we arived at a Bamboo train station to try another form of transport, the train is just a platform on a set of wheels with a small motor, they built it themselves then loaded us all on with the bikes! Was an amazing ride, speeding along at up to 50 k/hr, and stopping every time something was coming the other way. It depended who had more stuff on their train but passing involved dismantling one train for the other to pass it by! We had a stalemate at ne pont and thought no-one was going to give in before they agreed to unload the bikes and ride them back at the side of the track. Wa a great experience and apparently they will be gone soon as they are renovating the railways and the trains will then be too fast.

All in all the day was great fun and we saw and learnt a lot about their culture, the guys were very funny and had a joke ready for any occasion, most terrible!! The evening we sat up in the restaurant on the roof and had a few beers with Abbey and Paul before they left this morning.

Tomorrow we got to Phnom Penh so i will write more then! Thanks for all the messages, is so good to hear from you, keep them coming! x