Monday 8th May

We had an early bus ride to Battambang, not impressed, but we did sleep most of the way so the journey was quick! We arrived at the bus stop and jumped on a tuk-tuk to the Lotus Hotel. Apparently lotus sounds like Lux hotel! And after a small trip to said hotel and saying lotus loudly and slowly we headed to, I hoped, the correct hotel!

We arrived at the pink (bright pink) Lotus Hotel, where it was very empty. I think we may have been the only guest there! The lady at reception was lovely and giggly! She helped us into our room and we retreated to the pool. Our main reason for stopping at this hotel!

We tried to find a night market/stall but the tuk-tuk driver took us to the wrong place, which was central market and was now closing! We managed to find a pizza place and settled on there, it was still raining, hard, and found our driver to take us back to the hotel!

Tuesday 9th May

We woke up and headed down for breakfast, were we got a mini English breakfast and orange juice, coffee and a pot of tea. We had only asked for orange but I didn't have the heart to tell her as she was so sweet!

We lazed around the pool for the morning before deciding we should actually do something! We booked the lovely tuk-tuk driver to take us out for the day. Our first point of call was the bamboo train. When I first read about this I didn't really know what to expect or imagine! We were greeted by the ever so friendly tourist police who introduced us to the train and took our money. The train…well it was a flat square made out of bamboo and had train wheels attached at the bottom to the tracks, a single lined track, with traffic both ways!

We headed off and started slowly, but speed up; by god did it go fast! I kept my mouth shut in case of any flies! The train track is not the straightest track I have seen nor did it join up properly! At one point the train hit a higher piece of track and I nearly got thrown off the train! We had to duck under a few branches along the way and got attack by the foliage that had over grown alongside the track. To think if British trains could run like this! Before we got to the end of the track it had started to rain hard! At the end we jumped off and ran for shelter in one of the nearby shacks offering food & drinks. We got talking to the wonderful owner who lived in London a long time ago and we sat down and had a beer waiting for the rain to pass. I also experience THE loudest thunder I have ever heard. I swear it was literally behind me!

After most of the rain had slowly died we jumped back on to go back. We stopped a few times due to another train coming along and our driver jumped off and helped get the other train off the track. This involved said train being lifted and the wheels removed of the track. And soon we were on our way back to the start!

We found our tuk-tuk driver and were back on the road, it must have been a 30 minute journey to outside of the city into another town to visit the killing caves. We hired a couple of motos drivers to take us up to the top; this was a white knuckle ride for me! We walked down to the cave, which has been made into a shrine and has a similar glass case displaying bones and skulls of victims as the one in Phnom Penh. It was a very eerie feeling here, the Khmer Rouge threw people down into the cave to kill them, and sometimes the victims did not die straight away and suffered a long and painful death. I didn't like it here, made me feel very sick so we left and continued up higher to the viewing platform. It was a good view of the rice fields and surrounding town, there were a couple of monkeys about, up to no good properly.

We went back down and had some food one of the shacks where the whole family, neighbours and tuk-tuk drivers hung out and watched no other than Mr Bean! It showed a couple we have never seen before and we all had a good laugh. We were waiting for a couple of hour for dusk so we could see the bats exiting the cave to go and feast! We waited and waited and finally they started to move, there are some 2 million bats living in the cave and it takes them 45 minutes to all exit out of the cave. It was a very bizarre site, but glad we did it. After watching for 10 minutes we left and headed back into Battambang.

We managed to locate the correct night market and walked for 20 minutes to get there. It isn't quite the same as the one in Siem Reap, but the food was good. We came back to the hotel and watched a couple of movies before going to bed.

Wednesday 10th May

We had booked ourselves onto the cooking course for only $10 each! We arrived at the school at 9 am ready to start. We headed to the local market where we have seen more fruit and vegetables than we have ever seen! Our teacher was extremely good and had so much knowledge about each fruit and veg! We left and headed back to the school where we made fish amok, beef loc lac and fried spring rolls. It was really enjoyable and being the only two there got a lot of help! After our hard work we were allowed to eat our creations! It was good, really good! My favourite was the fish amok, the best tasting one I have had since arriving in Cambodia!

We had to buy bus tickets to get to Vietnam so as we were round the corner from the station we headed over. It was pretty simple, we had to get a morning bus to Phnom Penh and transfer to another bus to go directly to Ho Chi Minh City. Perfect, we paid and headed off. I was walking back thinking of the dates and days making sure everything was ok and then realised it was the 10th, crap our visas were for the 12th! We ran back and quickly changed the dates to the 12th free of charge! Phew! Glad I noticed before getting to the border otherwise that would have been a horrible ordeal!

We walked half way to the hotel, well down the road and we were melting, so we flagged down a tuk-tuk to take us to the hotel. Unfortunately he made the same mistake as the first driver and took us to the Lux hotel. After explaining (which I thought I did by saying it's over the river…!) we were on our way to the correct hotel!

We spent the rest of the afternoon around the pool, before getting changed and heading into town for dinner!

Thursday 11th May

Today we had no plans so did a bit of planning for Vietnam and booked a couple nights' stay in HCMC before finding some food. There isn't really a lot to do in Battambang, and it is now the low season for tourists so, not a lot of people were about.

We spent the rest of the day hanging by the pool and getting our bags ready for and early bus at 6:30 am!

Overall view on Cambodia:

We loved Cambodia, the people are lovely, despite their horrible history that only ended 30 years ago. The food is great and cheap, I don't think I have drunk so many fruit shakes and lemon juices in my life! The countryside is beautiful and the temples are stunning. So much diversity something will satisfy you! We are both on an agreement that we enjoyed Siem Reap the most and Koh Rong. I am sad to leave Cambodia after spending a month here, I am sure we will return again!

Total miles travelled from UK: 12,762

Transport taken:

Trains = 20

Boats = 3

Bus = 8

Hours ahead of UK:

+7