Tuk tuk Mayhem and the Moto Mafia

Heeling Hands - Angkor Wat

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The only way to get up these ridiculously thin, steep steps in a set of heels is to get on all fours and find a passing punter to help you up. Taking off your new Jimmy Choo's is out of the question. Image is everything in Angkor.

The Evidence

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Look! We were actually there, we didn't just steal pictures from other peoples blogs.

Preah Khan at 6am

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We decided to head to Preah Khan early to avoid the plague of coach tours. As it turned out we avoided the tourists and were joined instead by biblical plagues of low flying bats, swarms of giant bees, jumping spiders and branch leaping squirrels. Visiting hours don't apply to all.

Preah Khan - Disarming

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For about 45 minutes we had the place to ourselves. A complex of corridors, temples, stupas, statues and tree strangled stone was ours. We were the first of the day, but it felt like we were the first in a thousand years. For that half hour we were proper Tomb Raiders - minus the hotpant shorts, push up bra and pouty lips (...okay so I might have indulged in one out of three - I'll leave you to decide which).

Preah Khan - Major Tom

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Doors everywhere. Stairs everywhere too. Have you seen the bit at the end of Labyrinth when David Bowie is walking on the Escher type stone stairways? - that's what Preah Khan was like.

Preah Khan - Homefront

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A thousand years ago they hadn't invented Diarmuid Gavin but Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen was alive and well (the dress sense gives it away) and decorating Angkorians houses with typically twee statues. Fortunately they ignored his pleas to use MDF.

Neak Pean - No Bombing and No Heavy Petting

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Neak Pean was the Angkorians local council run swimming pool/hospital. Apparently a dip in the pool could cure any disease. Of course, while it may have cured the disease you arrived with, most people left with veruca's or athletes foot as the little pool you washed your feet in was largely ignored.

Neak Pean - Turnstiles

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This is the main entrance to Neak Pean. While in the UK our Council Pools use CCTV to stop chavs skipping through without paying, the Angkorians used the remarkably similar Giant Buddha Head above the doorway to similar affect.

Pre Rup

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Cool Towers, lots of steps and some lovely lions. What more do you want from a temple mountain?

Pre Rup - Vikki Makes a Friend

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If you buy from this girl it won't stop. If you buy one set of 10 Temple postcards then in her mind you will need the matching set of 10 Cambodian countryside. Buy them and you'll need a bracelet. You can't get away from it... unless, as Vikki discovered... you climb ridiculously high steps in a baking midday sun as fast as you can.

Careful Elephants??

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Can an elephant be careful? Clearly the makers of this sign haven't met Lau Chai.

The Main Road - Siem Reap to Battambang

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This journey should have taken four and a half hours, however, rain the previous day meant it took ten. The mud was amazing. This pillock decided that his speed would carry him through this major puddle. It didn't. For twenty minutes the crowd watched bemused as he tried again and again to get out. When he did finally make it his exhaust had swallowed so much mud and he'd rev'd it so hard that his engine had a new noise to accompany the blue smoke that poured from it. We were only going to Battambang - I felt sorry for the people going all the way to Bangkok - another seven hours away three of which were along Cambodian mud roads. According to the Lonely Planet, a major airline serving the Siem Reap to Bangkok route is paying the government to make sure the road isn't repaired anytime soon.

Bamboo Train - Battambang

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Basically it's a portable motor pushing a bamboo platform along the only railway in Cambodia. It was great fun but it made me glad that I hadn't got the real train from Phnom Penh to Battambang - some of the gaps between the rails were a little scarey.

Phnom Sampeau - Battambang

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The temple on the top of the "striking limestone outcrop" (words of the Lonely Planet) - Phnom Sampeau. However it was the Killing Caves underneath the temple that we came to see. Another reminder of Mr Pots reign of terror, it is the site of a horrific massacre. The skulls heaped inside a temple within the caves pay testimony to this.