Well, there isn't much to report from Battambang. It's a very small, French-looking town with limited cafes and bars - though the ones that are there are nice. And the normal crappy cheap hotels!

Battambang itself can be 'explored' in a morning. The only things to see in Battambang are the French houses and the temples, but new ones. The only quirky thing was the disused railway station and tracks. The station looks brand new, but hasn't been used for years, and the clock is always on 8:02! You can clamber over the tracks and look round the old French rolling stock and warehouses, though most of them are now inhabited/adopted into the shanty town across the tracks.

B'Bang is best used as a base for countryside tours, which I did on the Tuesday (Monday afternoon was one loooong boring afternoon I can tell ya). I hired a guide and his moto from my hotel. Well, he badgered me every time I walked in or out the hotel until I said yes. And we took off into the countryside. First stop was the bamboo train - a set of single tracks that a 'train' runs along. The train is a bamboo platform on wheels with a small motor that, when it meets something coming the other way, the less-laden of the 2 is unloaded and dismantled, allowing the other 'train' to pass. It was an ok ride, very loud and bumpy, and very fast! It goes one way for 20 mins. You stop, get harassed by kids for money for 10 mins, you get back on and go back the way you came.

I saw some people in tuktuks and apparently they're cheaper, by my driver said they can't go in the countryside, and I thought this was an odd excuse. Anyway, a few miles later we turned off a dry mud track and started heading into the villages/countryside. And I realised what he meant. The 'track' was a mass of holes and ditches that he couldn't even steer the bike through. I held on for dear life to the back bar and finished the day with blistered and bruised hands, and a sore bum! I was nearly bounced off the back a few times and a few times he had to stop altogether and scoot us through with his foot on the floor. I did offer to get off and walk but he got us through. Definitely not a track for tuktuks!

We then headed to some temples on the hilltop. There was a very steep staircase running up the hill, which was a killer. But not so much of a killer as to what was either side of the steps. As both sides and the whole land surrounding the mountain was closed off with bright red signs saying 'DANGER. MINEFIELD. DO NOT ENTER' So that was a little scary.

Back on the bike we went though more countryside to extremely remote places where I got some very funny looks and lots of children waving the running after the bike, so I guess not a lot of westerners do get to go that way. I couldn't believe the road, or lack of, it wasn't even a track. And the guide said that in the wet season the area is completely flooded and impassable! He thought it was passable then!? I have no idea how the villages get goods etc in and out as cars simply can't go that way any time of year, but hundreds of people live there. But they were pretty much shanty towns and ram-shackled huts made out of whatever they can find. And then, in the middle of all these huts appeared a huge marble mosque! It was massive! The guide told me this was a Muslim village. Wonder what gave him that idea?! I have no idea how they built it, got it there or paid for it, as these people are the poorest of the poor and totally isolated.

We finished the day at another temple and the Khmer Rough Killing Caves. The guide also told me that tuktuks wouldn't take me up the mountain, but we could get up there on the bike. I hadn't really thought this through until we got to the mountain and he started driving up these near vertical roads with me clinging onto him for dear life. The bike was over-revving and overheating and by the time we got to the top it was smoking and burning! There was a nice view over the whole area from the top of the mountain, and the odd monkey leaping around. I also didn't really think about the other implication - which was coming back down. I kept my eyes closed and somehow we made it down alive.

That afternoon I bumped into a nice German girl that I shared a room with on the tour in Vietnam. So we had dinner and a chat, which was nice. And then I headed back to the hotel to pack my bag for the bus to Bangkok the following day.