Feb 14 - Leaving Phnom Penh today, and I think we could probably have done with another day at least - it's an amazing city and felt very familiar to us, but maybe that's because of similarities to Africa. It's strange, but a lot of travellers in Vietnam told us to avoid it, and one guy described it as "like a slum of Saigon". We thought the opposite - and I guess it just goes to show how differently people can view the same place.

We'd booked a bus to Battambang, just north of Siem Reap, as we wanted to take a boat down the Sangker River and into Tonle Sap lake, on our way to the temples of Angkor. We didn't leave until 10:00, so got up at 6:30, and headed across to Psar Thmei market. This is a huge structure, shaped like a cross from above, with a high central dome and four wings stretching out to each side. It was built by the French in the 1930s, and the breezeblock ventilation is meant to keep it cool on even the hottest of Cambodian summer days. We got there as it was just opening up, and so were able to wander around before the first crush of visitors. Some of the restaurants were clearly doing a roaring coffee and breakfast trade, and hundreds of steaming cups of coffee or tea were being deposited in the still-empty stalls - obviously regular orders for stall holders still on their way into work.

The central dome seemed to hold mostly jewellery shops and the four wings, with their built in cooling capability, were split roughly into meat, clothing, electronics & books and what could only be described as 'other stuff'. The food market, thought, was awesome; it forms a sort of winding maze around the main wings of Psar Thmei - every kind of fruit, vegetable and edible animal known to man was on display somewhere, with rows and rows of strangely prepared bits of smoked meat and fish. The whole place was a riot of colour - everything neatly layed out into hundreds of stalls, with some types of produce we'd never even seen before, and couldn't identify. There were also a range of little restaurants which were already starting to fill up for breakfast. The smells were overpowering, but not bad - even in the particular wing that's used as a butchery. There were 20 or 30 individual, unrefrigerated stalls, with butchers cutting up and preparing a whole range of meat for the day's customers, but there was a fresh smell in the air. I'm not sure what it would've been like after a long day, but apparently it's not too bad!

We walked around the book and clothing section - almost all the brands look familiar, but at 5-10% of the prices back home. I guess everything here is either a knock-off or has made it out the back door of one of the international factories as part of some extra-mural sales effort. We bought a new 'North Face' daypack for 8 dollars, as I'd torn a hole in my old one, and headed back to the hotel to wait for the bus, which arrived bang on time at 10:00.

The trip to Battmbang was about 6-7 hours, and we were the only foreigners on the bus. The tickets were only a few dollars, but it had aircon and in-flight entertainment (the South African movie "The Gods must be Crazy", dubbed into the Khmer language!) plus a couple of other movies. I was typing out my blog from a few days ago, and then heard a voice from behind me slowly repeating what I was typing :"And...then...we...arr..arrived...in...Vietnam..." I turned around, and the guy in the seat behind me was reading my blog, and relaying it to the passenger in the next seat. "Hello, I'm Tamal," he said. "Have you just come from Vietnam?" "Er, yes," I replied - still not quite used to the openess of Cambodian society. "Terrible place," he said. "Cambodia much better. My friend wanted to know what you're doing here, and my English is better." So we had a strange three way conversation - me, Tamal and his friend who couldn't speak English. He was heading off to the northeast to start a new job, but had lived in a Buddhist pagoda while studying in Phnom Penh. "Watch out for those monks," he laughed. "Behind the orange robes, they are just like the rest of us - I should know!" Cheryl and I were talking about it afterwards, and we reckoned that's probably why monks are almost always sent out in pairs - to keep and eye on each other. Anyway, it was great to talk to a couple of locals, and hear about their life. They were really interesting and didn't have any angle at all.

We stopped for lunch and we have no idea where! The bus just pulled off at a little dusty restaurant on the side of the road. The manager's English was only slightly better than our Cambodian (which is to say, he didn't speak it at all!) So we pointed hopefully at the things that looked good, and were served up two plates of the most delicious food - a sort of meat and greens stew, with rice and couple of Cokes. The bill at the end came to R8000 - about a quid for both of us!

At about 4-ish, we arrived in Battambang. The bus station is a fair distance outside town, so we got a couple of motos to drop us off. They drove us into town pas a huge statue of Siva, and hundreds of roadside stalls selling flowers and wishing everyone a 'Happy Valentine's day", or in some cases, just "Happy Day"!, We'd both forgotten about Valentine's day, and quickly agreed we didn't and never would support this sort of overcommercialised marketing gimmick (Phew!). My driver got lost, and also could not speak English all that well - so after we lost Cheryl and her driver in traffic, we took a slightly convoluted tour of Battambang before we spotted Cheryl standing outside the Royal hotel, looking slightly bemused!

There's not a huge amount to do here, despite the fact that we were in Cambodia's second largest city. Battambang is slightly famous for it's Norrys or 'bamboo trains', which are tiny portable platforms with a motor that run on normal gague tracks (at unscheduled times, and in either direction!) They are taken on & off the track by the driver (and passengers) whenever a normal train turns up, hopefully in time to avoid being crushed, and if two norrys meet, then the lighter one needs to give way. We'd got in a bit late to see those, though, and the only other 'attractions' are a some French colonial buildings, and a couple of bars that claim to have been frequented by Angelia Jolie during the making of Tomb Raider. Battambang is also the place where she adopted her first child, Maddox, and we drove past the huge Jolie-Pitt orphanage on the way in.

So we headed up to the rooftop bar for a couple of beers to chill out , and watched the sunset while planning our next move. Our copy of the Lonely Planet is getting a well worn look, and we spent a couple of hours thumbing through and working out how to see all the remote bits of Cambodia we want to get to. The manager of our hotel organised our boat tickets, and we then headed out to find a restaurant for dinner.

We ended up at a little place called Smokin' Pot. Despite the name, the food seemed to just be excellent traditional Khmer cooking. They did a cooking course in the mornings, which we would have loved to attend, but we were leaving at 6:30 the next day to get to Siem Reap. The obviously didn't have a liquor license, though, or maybe the fridge had packed in - so every time anyone ordered a beer, they'd send one of the owner's kids off on his bike to bring back a couple of cold ones from the bottle store down the road! Turned in for an early-ish night at about 11.