Feb 24 - It rained that night - which cleared the sky, and cooled everything down a bit. We rolled out of our institutional bed at around seven (they only had twins, so we squashed into a single) and greeted the day with a cold shower (no hot water!). We said goodbye to Prom Tep guesthouse, and headed back to Kunthea for breakfast. We noticed in the morning that the restaurant is next to a dentist's shop. It has a large picture of a tooth outside, and a huge sign proclaiming 'Laser Whitening!' (Several dogs were snoozing on a pile of sand in front of it). I'm not sure which of Tbeng Meanchey's residents make use of the service, as it's a dirt poor one-horse town, with no bank, post office or internet, but strange anomolies like that crop up all over Cambodia!

After breakfast, we set off for the longest day's driving of the trip - all the way to Preah Kahn. The roads were worse than we thought, and we seemed to be driving for ever. We weren't sure that Roehn had been this way before, as he kept stopping to ask the locals which way was best - but apparently there's a heap of road improvement on at the moment, so the 'best route' changes every day.

We drove though village after village, and stopped in one place to buy some food on the side of the road, as there's nothing in the way of shops close to Preah Kahn. We pointed to the most recognisable thing (a sort of pork stir fry) and the stall-owner packed it into cardboard take-away containers for us, before we set off again. Roehn was in the middle of telling us about the uses for some of the local trees we were passing, when he suddenly pulled the vehicle to a halt. "Ok, I need to go piss now," he said, deadpan. "That's the right word, yes? Piss?" It's weird how some statements clearly don't translate directly from one language to another, but it was too complicated to explain!

On that note, as we carried on to Preah Kahn, he told us a story about a hill we were passing. This was apparently the tomb of the White Elephant King. I've tried to paraphrase the tale here, but it may well have lost something in the translation!

<< A long time ago a beautiful girl lived in the jungle. Her family was very poor, and each day she had to go out and collect water. One day, near the end of the dry season, there was no water to be had, and so she walked around to ask her neighours if they would share. All her neighbours were pleased to see the girl having to beg, as she had rejected advances from many of them in the past. 'You should have accepted our marriage proposals,' they said. 'Then we could help you. But we have nothing to share.'

So the girl walked, carrying her buckets. She walked, and grew thirsty. She walked some more, and grew more thirsty. Eventually she started to feel weak, but carried on, knowing her family needed the water. She carried right on, into the land of the elephant kings. Finally, as she was about to give up, and lie down to die, she saw a small pool. She ran to the pool, and drank deeply from it, although it was brackish; and swam in the water to cool herself down. As she recovered, she looked up to see a monkey in the tree. 'You fool!,' the monkey cried. 'This pool is where the elephant king comes to piss! There will be consequences!' And he scampered off.

She leapt out of the pool, and crossed the hill; coming immediately to a large lake of cool, clear water. She filled up her buckets, and made her way home. Some days later, the rains came, life returned to normal, and she forgot all about the monkey and his warning.

A few months afterwards, her mother looked her up and down one morning. 'You are getting fat, girl, what have you been eating?' But of course, it wasn't fat - she was pregnant. 'What shame have you brought on our house? Who is the boy?' cried the mother. But the girl remembered what had happened, and related the story, and the monkey's warning, to her mother. 'There is nothing to be done,' said the mother. 'We will have to raise the child alone.'

The girl gave birth to a daughter - just as beautiful as she was (no trunk!) and raised her with her grandmother, as best she could. One day, the girl came home from school crying - she'd been teased about her lack of a father, and wanted to know what had happened to him. THe mother decided she was old enough, and told her the truth. From that moment, the need to meet her father became an obsession with the girl, and she eventually persuaded the mother to undertake a journey, retracing her steps. They walked and walked and walked. They asked all the animals they met, but all they would say was that the king was far far away to the north. They carried on for days, and seemed no closer, when they came across the old monkey, sitting in a Banyan tree. 'I warned you!' he cackled, 'Didn't I?'. 'Please help us,' the mother cried, and the monkey took pity on them ... swinging away through the trees to find the Elephant King. They waited for days, and just when they were about to give up hope, they heard a procession coming through the jungle.

The King was old, and couldn't see well. He shuffled closer, and bent down to look at the girl, for a long while. 'Yes. This is my daughter,' he said, and knelt down to look at her, eye to eye, which was a great honour. But the daughter was tired and frustrated from waiting for so long, and filled with anger. 'It's your fault we've been poor and lonely,' she shouted, 'You could have found us anytime you liked. I hate you!' She ran off over the hill. The king wanted to follow, but his retinue persuaded him that it would be unseemly. 'Let her come back and apologise first,' they said, and he reluctantly agreed to wait.

The girl returned home, still angry, but filled with a new fire of life as well. She knew where she came from now, and held her head up high. Soon she attracted the attention of a prince of the land, who was passing through the village, and he asked for her hand in marriage, despite the fact that she brought no dowry. The wedding proceeded, and for a short time they were happy. The prince was obsessed with discovering where such a beautiful and strong woman had come from, though, and pressed her day and night with questions about her missing father.

She loved him, and eventually agreed - telling him the story of the Elephant King. The prince, however, flew into a rage, believe her to be mocking him, and accused her of bewitching him. He shouted at her, locked her away and even beat her; but nothing he could do would make her deny her origins. One night, in a mixture of love and anger, he resolved to cast her aside, but when he awoke the next morning, he heard a commotion at the gates of his city - the Elephant king had heard of his daughter's plight, and come to intercede. Stunned, the prince immediately released her, and she flew down the stairs to greet her father. The prince looked on with guilt and shame, but the king called him over. 'I am old, and my time is almost done. I charge you to love my daughter, and raise your children as kings of this land - your father's line and mine.' The journey had cost him greatly though, and as he gave them his blessing, he sank to his knees and died. The daughter cried, the son and his people mourned - and they built a hill over the Elephant King, where his bones still rest, as a monument to the love of a father for his daughter>>

Roehn smiled when he finished the story. "When I told my daughter this story, she cried," he said. "I love these kinds of stories, they have a meaning. How do you say - a moral?" I had to agree. Back at home we'd probably have a sarcastic response about the moral being "Don't drink elephant piss, unless you're on the pill", but there was something really open, beautiful and charming about the way he told this story, and others; and before we knew it, we were at Preah Kahn.

We had lunch on the steps of Preah Kahn, which is the biggest single temple in Cambodia. As we were picking out bits of kidney that we'd failed to see when ordering the food, we realised we'd been driving for six hours on seriously bad dirt roads. We were looking forward to spending a bit of time out of the car, and one of the local site protection guys walked us around. The temple is over two kilometers end to end, and has hardly been cleared at all, so there was some serious bush bashing going on. The only other people there were a security detail from the King's office, who were scounting out helicopter landing sites for a future royal visit. This was definately Angkorian architecture as explorers would have seen it in the twenties and thirties. Along with the visible outline of the main temple - much of which was still standing, there were bits of delicate stonework scattered around the site, obviously untouched for hundreds of years. In a patch of recently burned grass, we saw a small pile of lingas - looking like unexploded ordinance ... we were probably the first foreigners to see them for many years. All in all we walked for a couple of hours - probably a good 8-9km in 39 degree heat, but it was fantastic - definately one of my favorite places so far.

We left about four-ish and got back on the road from hell. The sky was stormy and we saw rainbows in the sky, and reflected in the few bodies of water still remaining in the dry season. We passed through some beautiful bits of the countryside on the way back. Some areas even had their trees intact! We saw a wood cutter come out at around dusk. He had a wicked looking little pickaxe over his shoulder, and a garotte of wire on his belt for ringbarking the smaller trees. I was torn between wanting to talk to him, and making a grab for the wheel to try and run him over, but he scampered off into the jungle as soon as he saw us. In the end, I guess he's just one of the little guys - risking jail for a couple of dollars a day, while the bosses of the operation (apparently high-up in the military) rake in the cash. We talked to Roehn about it - and it's clear the problem is that people are just too poor here to avoid the opportunity to make a little extra cash. Mixed with government corruption and involvment, it's a recipe for destruction. There's got to be some way to get that money to them, though, and make it worth their while to preserve what's left of this beautiful countryside - but I'm not sure what it is yet, or (more importantly) how you would organise it without getting run over by the gravy train!

After three and a half hours, we pulled into Kompong Thom - another provincial capital with well under 100,000 people. We checked into the Arunras hotel, caught a quick bite to eat, and collapsed; absolutely shattered after a marathon day's driving!