Well... I was just about to put up my hundreds of photos - from Angkor Temples, Siem Reap, an elphant ride we did, Battambang, the couple of temples around there, the bamboo trip, the landmine museum, some gorgeous Cambodian countryside, the killng caves.... but this computer just wiped all my photos from my memory card when I plugged it into the computer, and I hadn't backed any up since Thailand.... SO I have no photos. Gutted - I had some amazing ones. And this keyboard hardly works so typing is a massive effort.

In a place called Sihounkville at the moment, I couldn't find it on the map cos I don't know the Cambodian name, but it's somewhere near where I've put. It's throwing it down with rain so we can't go to the beach. Cambodia is definitely my favourite country so far - it's beautiful, and the people are amazing! So I'm doubly tipley gutted I lost my photos. The others will be putting some up on facebook and I'll just have to get the others off them when I get home - don't think I'm going to risk putting up any more photos til I get back though - sorry!

Sooo, I can't remember where I got to with the last blog. Siem Reap was cool - quite a few tourists there. Cambodia's third biggest city, and the jumping off point for the temples of Angkor! We decided to go out the night before we went to Angkor, even though we were being picked up by our tuk tuk drivers at 5am. Went to the Angkor What bar which is a bit legendry in the backpacker Asia world! 2 buckets (bigger than Thai buckets!) for US$10, and a free tshirt haha! Met some guys from Bournville haha.

So yeah, set off from our little guest house at 5am to get to Angkor Wa for sunrise, just missed it really... but still managed to get some really cooool pictures lke silohuette like! But, they've gone. GR. Ws amazing though, it's very spectaculr! And its huge, although the token photo that you see everywhere looks a lot more amazing n a photo - the temple itself is huge, but the entrance bit isn't as big as I thought it would be. Still amazing though. There were so many people there though!

Spent the rest of the morning wandering around all the different temples - Angkor Thom, which is huge, a couple more who's name I can't remember... some cool Buddah themed stuff! And the temple where they filmed the Tomb Raider movie which was prety cool too - massive tree roots growing over everything! Got some cool photos of us pretending to be shooting each other in the temples lol... but guess what!? They've gone. GR.

Went home for lunch and a nap and returned to Angkor for late afternoon and sunset! Got an elephant ride up a hill - big temple on the top and we were going to watch sunset but it didn't really happen cos it was cloudy. The elephant ride was cool though! Very high up and a bit unstable! They steer them by sitting on their heads and steering the elephants ears with their feet!

We got a tuk tuk from Siem Reap to the Landmine museum too, which was well worth the trip. It was set up by a Cambodian man, who during the Khmer Rouge was commuted to be a child soldier, and he killed a lot of people and planted a lot of the landmines. Now, after the regime and the war, he has dedicated his life to digging up th landmines, and estimates he has recovered about 50,000 over the last years. There are at least 3 million land mines left in Cambodia and there could be up to 6 million still about. The museum was very informative about them - they weren't meant to kill people, they were just meant to cause them to lose limbs, to handicap them and prevent them from working - thus hindering the economy this way as the government would have to pay to care for them. And there are a lot of landmine victims around... it's really sad. And a lot of kids with no arm or leg. The man at the museum has also established an orphanage that's attached and all the kids were wandering round when we were there - saying hello and stuff! They have a classroom there too so they can be educated a bit by volunteers.

The jounrey out there was amazing too - the Cambodian countryside is amazing! They all like in little wooden huts on stilits and grow their own food and have cows, and a little stll at the front of their houses, and there's like 6,7,8 kids in ech house. Only the privaliged kids can go to school (or the ones that work in the morning and pay to go to school in the afternoon). We were riding home at the same time as school was finishng and following hundreds of kids riding home on their bikes! They were all shouting hello and waving at us, and I had a bt of an emotional burst haha when one kid we'd been following made his way home! They're so cute - all of the kids are gorgeous and they're so happy and friendly. They speak amazing English as well and some of them are so clever! We all bought a book each from different kids about stories of people in the Khmer Rouge, and the kids have a bit of a chat with you, and they were telling us about the countries in the UK (most people just think the UK is Englandm, they've neve heard of Wales etc!), how many people live there, the capitals of loads of different countries and how many people live in them - they're amazing!

From Siem Reap we went to a town called Battambang which I loved too - there were hardly any tourists there either - was like proper Cambodia. There wasn't a lot to do in the actual town, so the first day we arrived at lunch time, we hired a motorbike and a driver and drove to a couple of the attractions outside of the town. The bike was soo much fun - I was so scared t first, but you can see loads, and all the kids were shouting hello again so you could say hello and a couple of people pulled up alongside us to as where I was from and stuff! There's not really a road system - they drive on the right, pedestrians and cyclists on the inside of the lane, then mopeds/bikes and cars and buses although there aren't many, just overtake by beeping really loudly - there's not much of a system! Haha. That afternoon we went to Phnom Arrun (I think it was called, I can't remember again!), a big temple at the top of like 360 steep stone steps. We set off up the hill and thes little CAmbodian kids followed us, fanning us on the way up! They were soo cute! They picked us little flowers at the top and Mel got a massage off the girl fanning her! Gave them a dollar or so each, and they took a couple of photos for us!

We then went on to the bamboo train - there's no passenger services in Cambodia, ever since the Khmer Rouge, so they use the bamboo train instead. Basically there's one train track and people have a bamboo platform mounted on to set of wheels and there's a little motor that powers you down the track. If anything comes the other way you have to stop, and whoever has the least amount of stuff to remove has to take everything off their bamboo platform and dismantle tht and the wheels so they can get past each other! It actually does happen haha, we passed a lot of families who had been into the town and bought their food from the markets and had to dismantle their little trains to let us past! We only had to dismantle one cos we always had more stuff than the cart coming the other way - we had 3 motorbikes on ours as well as 7 people! It was really good though, an experience! Drove through all the rice fields, and the little kids working in the fields, or the cows pulling the ploughs etc.

They still use horse and cart a fair bit, and cattle/oxen to pull carts. There's kids as young as like 12 driving motornikes with four kids on, or there's kids aged about 5 riding big adult sized old fashioned biks with their little brothers and sisters on. We saw a lot of kids carrynig massive sacks of rice to thir homes - literally like 4 or 5 years old. And there's a lot of litle 4 5 6 year old kids taking care of their 18 month 2 year old siblings. The youngest we saw in the rice fields were probably about 6 or 7. Saw a lot of young kds washing in the dirty puddles fformed round the fields and stuff. There's loads of kids here - parents need them to work for the family - 40% of the populaion is under 15 years old.

Headed back into town after the bamboo train and passed by a big park which we went back to early everning - apparently every day families go there at about 5 or 6 pm for a couple of hours - they were all so happy it was like being at som sort of carnival! There were kids playing games everywhere, and 2 or 3 massive aerobics classes going on! Headed to the night food market to grab some dinner, which turned into a bit of a disastor as we couldn't understand each other at the market! I only speak 2 words of Khmer haha!

Next day me and John went to the killing caves with our same motorbike drivers - they earned a fortune that week! They said that during the low season (now!), they might only get 1 or 2 days a week taking tourists, which might be $5 or $7 a day. We paid them $10 each a day as a tip cos they were so helpful - they drove slow for us and told us lots of local info! Yeah so we went to the killing caves - basically a big hill with a few temples up th top (which were used as prisons during the Khmer Rouge regime), and some caves where people were killed and there were still loads of skeletons and bones at the bottom. We had an amazing guide - a student from the area. He was 22 (and can't remember his name!) he was still at school, because he can't go to school continuosly because he can't always afford it - it's $10 US a month. He spoke amazing Enlgish and showed us the right way to go, chated to us and told us loads of info about what were were seeing. He did lay it on a bit thick toward the end, about not being able to pay for school food and giving his mom money, but I suppose if I was in his situation I would too! He had to pay for his school the next day, so we gave him $10 for a month of school. I did have photo of him grr but tht's gone too. He sad he's been an illegal immigrant in Bangkok doing construction (which my motorbike guide - Rik apparently ha - had done too - seemed to be a popular choice!) Mel and Katie did a Khmer cooking course that morning, and I bought cookbook from there too cos the food is amazing here!

We got the bus the next morning to Sihounkville - th beach. And it's throwing it down! GR. Not sure what we're gonna do - might head to an island tomorrow, who knows! John flies out of Phnom Penh soon so we'll be heading there in a couple of days.