Sunday, 10th July 2016 For those who might consider going to Cambodia on holiday as too much of a risk, I do think that you should think again as not only is there so much to see and do but the quality of the hotels and restaurants is excellent and the price of the nuts and bolts of a holiday here is very, very reasonable contrasted with more established destinations. For example, if you hire a tuk-tuk driver in the early afternoon to take you 30km or so to an out of town temple, he will take you to several stop offs on the way and wait for you while you have an evening meal back in Siem Reap before returning you back to your out of the city centre hotel...for a mere $30 (and that if you are very generous with your tip!). You can eat well very cheaply. But you can also eat very well in excellent, top-rated restaurants for a quarter of the cost at home. We've had brilliant curries, mild and spicey ones, laced with coconut, ginger, lemongrass, etc which compare more than favourably with anything served up to us at home. And the service is impeccable. Everyone smiles and is ultra-friendly. Every tour we've taken in both Vietnam and Cambodia has been punctual and every guide very professional but relaxed and light-hearted in their manner. Roads are generally in good condition and the mini-buses, taxis and planes are just as good if not better than what you'd expect back home. There are plenty of adventures and minor challenges to be had on holiday in Vietnam and Cambodia. If anyone is half-thinking of bringing the family here instead of a fortnight in high season in Majorca, I would recommend this experience every time. Anyway, back to Sunday! Sunday was planned as an unplanned day. No alarm to wake us too early! We sauntered into breakfast at near nineish and considered some ideas for the day as we munched our way through croissants, french toasts and banana and my new favourite yoghurt flavour, plain yoghurt with fresh passion fruit. We often try to get to see a film at a local cinema when we're on our travels. At 11.45 a.m. "Independence Day 2" at the Platinum Cinema was showing. Why not? There's a good reason why not! Although the cinema was plush and the seats cheap enough at $5 a throw, the film was dire. But there you go! You can't win them all. With an increased number of dollars on our persons, following our first encounter with an ATM in Cambodia, we made for the area around the city which was over-loaded with tourists last night. Much quieter in the early afternoon! They were out temple touring or taking a siesta! Having watched some smart barterers operating last night, we bought a few things from the indoor market at lower than asked for price, basically for Caitlin.... t shirt, trousers and necklace. An hour or so further browsing with an multi-flavoured ice cream stop included was sufficient before we hauled in one of the hundreds of unemployed tuk-tuk drivers to take us back to the hotel. Afternoon chill out completed at the Sarai Resort, we were ready for the Phare Show, a few kilometres away. If you go, just get the cheapest priced tickets as there's minimal diiference between the quality of the viewing experience wherever you may sit. And the quality of the performance was worth every dollar - spectacular high energy acrobatics combined with huge dollops of humour. A fun filled hour which received a rousing ovation from the multi-national audience. Highly entertaining for all ages. Go!! Monday, 11th July 2016 Not so early today leaving the hotel at 8.00 a.m. by tuk-tuk for our bike tour today! We were taken to the small headquarters of the Butterfly Tours company where we met our cheerful leader for the day, a 21 year old called Bo. He is a guide throughout the day and a university student for three hours every night. His work pays for his study. We paid $111 total for the three of us to spend a day in his company biking around out of town villages. Very quickly, we were away from the fairly sedate city traffic and onto the sandy soiled tracks that took us into the countryside. I cycled beside Bo for the first half an hour and he talked openly about the Pol Pot era. His grandfather was a teacher who escaped the slaughter of the educated classes by changing his name and working in the fields. The locals did not betray him to the Khmer Rouge. He also mentioned the assasination this week of a respected critic of the Government and the planned demonstrations in Phnom Penh against the killing. Bo is one of the founders of the Butterfly Tours company and he passionately believes in providing work for local people. All the village visits the likes of us make on their tours put money into the hands of the villagers. First stop was amongst the paddy fields where Bo explained that there were no-one in the fields as it was not planting nor harvest time and that transplanting rice by hand meant that more rice would be harvested per field but was generally too labour intensive. As a result, rice grains are generally scattered and left to grow. And the farmers? They would have other jobs to keep the Cambodian wolf from the door.....tuk-tuk drivers, labourers, etc. Even though it was only nine-ish in the morning, our first stop for the purchase of water was very necessary as heavy perspiration was already taking its toll on me.....and continued to do so for most of the morning. Over the next few hours, we spent unhurried time in various villages without coming across any tourists. It did feel as though we were off the beaten track! At a village market, we wandered around the fish and meat stalls and used our dodgy pronunciation of our limited Cambodian vocabulary to make the stall holders laugh as they attempted to correct us. Bo bought us some exotic fruit which we shared before heading off to our next stop at a basket maker's house. I say house but it was quite a primitive, open-air affair with every part of her and her young son's life in one small roofed area....the bed, kitchen, living area, workshop.... shared with the domineering rooster and scrawny chickens and chicks. One complete piece of the woman's intricate handiwork might take two days to complete and sell for only a few dollars. We felt happy to buy something from her having spent time in her company and with Caitlin and Alyson given the opportunity to do a little weaving under her instruction. Our dinner stop was at another home just as the rains started to fall for the first time. Two of the young sons were tasked with helping the grandmother bring in the scores of baskets which were drying in the sun. Meanwhile, the youngest son at 18 months wandered everywhere, pulled the whelping dog's tail, tried on my sunglasses, tried to grab the pots from the stove, fell slapbang onto the concrete floor and generally entertained us as we watched his mum cook us a vegetable meal. Well fed and back into dry weather, the over-privileged family biked on until we came to a local school. Bo didn't expect us to be allowed into the classrooms but as there was a Korean flag being hoisted by an university professor from Soeul as we entered the grounds, it became apparent that he was in charge for the day...or next few weeks. He had several of his visiting university students in each classroom leading activities while he toured us around the Korean sponsored school. By the way, he told us quite proudly that his name translated as "Political Power". This amused Caitlin so greatly that she persuaded Alyson to ask him his name a second time, this time with my camera providing videoed-evidence for future sharing with her contemporaries. Typical! The rains suddenly arrived with a vengeance! Along with the footballing lads, we dived for cover and joined in a skipping game with a group of girls who twirled a twine of vine-like home-made rope over our heads. And the rains didn't stop! We put on our ponchoes, received as freebies from a stall in the Urdd Eisteddfod a few weeks earlier, and battled through the storm. Despite our plastic covering, we were getting drenched....and the temperature wasn't so hot by now! Bo, minus coat, was complaining lightly about the cold! The cycling was getting more strenuous and Alyson was mentioning the effect that the saddle was having on her rear end! We arrived at an impressive Buddhist temple still smiling though starting to tire. Once again, locals laughed at our determined attempts to greet them in the local language as we marvelled at the amazing murals. A huge one on the external back wall portrayed what happens to those Buddhists who stray from the paths of righteousness. Very threatening! Very graphic! Following our last stop at a rice wine distillery where we took a quick slug of the evil stuff, we still had half an hour plus of riding through the waterlogged paths until we triumphantly arrived back at the Butterfly tours' offices. A brilliant, eye-opening day which we would do again in a heartbeat. Thanks again to Bo, an oustanding guide. After a necessary shower...Caitlin went first!..., we ate out in "George's Rhumerie".This came out as number 2 on tripadvisor out of all of Siem Reap's restaurants. It happened to be a minute's walk from our hotel and offered lots of vegetarian choices. Another good meal but it didn't beat the vegetable curry in Sarai Resort's Goat Tree restaurant although the mango and sweet potato cake was rather special. Tuesday, 12th July 2016 Crazy golf in the morning on an Angkor Wat designed course out in the countryside where local residents laughed at our failures as they leant against the bordering fence. Caitlin enjoyed it although she was scores above par after the first round of 14 holes and not much better after the second round. Of course, Alyson's conservative style of play meant that she carded the lowest score to her smug satisfaction! As we had bought a three day's temple pass, we were in danger of underusing it. Decision made then to visit some more temples further afield. Alyson did the research this time and with a tuktuk driver local to our hotel booked for $25, we set off on our 30km journey (1hr plus) towards Banteay Srai (Lady Temple). Occasional heavy rains meant that our driver stopped here and there to put down and then lift up the plastic shutters to shieldus from the showers. Caitlin was struggling with feeling under the weather but stoically, and strangely quiet for her, battled on. Before arriving at Banteay Srai, we visited the Land Mines Museum. While there's plenty to enjoy in Cambodia, there sufficient reminders of the horrors that have gripped the country in the second half of the 20th century. This museum has been set up to help victims of the mines and bombs that were laid and dropped in the sixties and seventies. When the Americans were dropping their bombs on the Vietnamese on the Ho Chi Minh trail, they were also dropping them on the Cambodians. Apparently, about 600,000 Cambodians were killed by American bombs. 600,000! And most of these were ordinary villagers. How aware are most Westerners, and Americans, of this? And soon after, Pol Pot and his minions took over killing anyone educated in genocide on a huge scale. The American ex-officer in the military, a volunteer in the museum who told us this, also mentioned that Pol Pot lived on until the late nineties and that his deathbed was just two miles from the museum. This area until that time was still a Khmer Rouge stronghold and Pot was never brought to full justice for his crimes against humanity. This is a small museum but it is well worth the visit. The admission charge is used to support the under-priveleged and to set up schools in the area. The founder of the museum is an ex-Khmer Rouge boy soldier who laid mines himself but now continues to clear up the hundreds of thousands of landmines which lay hidden and continue to take thousands of lives each year. With our thoughts still on the stories we heard and the images in the museum, we arrived at 4.30ish at Banteay Srai temple complex. Getting there at this sort of time enabled us to admire the intricate stone decorations and wander with relatively few other travellers around battling with us to take their selfie-snaps in front of some corner of the temple. More rain came as we rushed to the waiting tuktuk and on the journey back we watched as traders packed away their stalls and young boys drove a few cattle across the main roadway before night quickly nosed its way in. Some fifteen minutes or so away from Siem Reap, our tuktuk driver stopped for us to visit one more temple. Caitlin was templed out by this stage and waited for us as we climbed steep blocks of stone steps to the top. We arrived and left ignorant of the temple's name and history. Worth the quick climb though. Very atmospheric! Our tuktuk driver deposited us in the Mamma restaurant in Siem Reap which I would highly recommend. A top notch eatery run by an Italian with as good as it gets pizzas and pastas and puddings at a more than reasonable price. We've eaten mainly Cambodian food during our stay in Siem Reap, so we didn't feel too guilty with an Italian restaurant for a change. Our driver took us back to the hotel after the meal. I hope that $30 was sufficient payment for his labour! We quickly, but carefully, packed for the morning's flight to Sihanoukville and soon were asleep. Our time in Siem Reap has been memorable!