Into Cambodia

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Well we have met everyone now, there are 14 of us, plus Harry - our guide. Everyone seems really nice. We had our initiation and explanation of how things work, before heading off for our first group dinner. The restaurant was really nice and the food was excellent, I had some chicken and cashew nuts with rice. The finally after dinner... We went to bed, ready to be up for 6:39!



Today we left behind Thailand and entered Cambodia. The majority of the day was spent on some form of bus. Firstly we had a lovely leather-clad mini bus to take us to the border. We walked across the border with no problems to meet a free bus, which took us 10 mins down the road to catch our private bus. It was not as modern as the other one, but it was bigger, so we could all spread out for the rest of the journey. Lunch was en route, Harry ordered 4 different typical dishes from Cambodia for all of us to try and share. It was delicious. I am loving the organisation of the tour, everything is thought of and nothing is too much trouble!



Battambang is a much calmer place after Barmy Bangkok. The streets are much wider and the pace of life is generally slower too. We had a little while before we all piled into Tuk Tuks and headed out to explore. Once we were at Sampeau Mountain (Phnom Sampeau) we walked up a steep hill to get to the temple at the top. The building had been used as a prison during the war and bit by bit the monks are repairing and repainting the building to show the story of the Buddha. Harry can remember doing tours when there was still blood stains on the floor! The resilience and determination of the Cambodians is admirable, the temple now looks fabulous with big pictures decorating the exterior and interior, topped off with prayer flags hanging brightly across the inside of the temple. It is hard to imagine that anything bad happened there ever!
Just around the corner from the temple Harry showed us a cave where hundreds of people were killed. During the war the educated people of Battambang had their legs and arms tied together and were beaten with bamboo until they plummeted to their death into the cave below, where they were left to rot. You can still see the skulls and bones of the people that were killed as the locals have collected them from the deepest part of the cave to add to a shrine. 95% of Cambodians are Buddhist and they believe in Karma, if you do good things then you go to heaven, if you do bad things, you go to hell. They believe that there are 7 levels of heaven and 7 levels of hell. There was a gruesome statue that portrayed the different consequences of committing bad acts, e.g. A woman that had committed adultery, was shown to be climbing up a prickly tree and impaled by a sharp stake through her genitals... Nice! We walked to the top of the mountain which gave us a fantastic view of Battambang and the rice fields below. We met some monks and learnt that we, as women, could not have our photo taken with them, so they posed for us instead! We also saw our first monkeys swinging through the trees... I made sure Gill was closest as she has the rabies jab! We then settled down to try and cool down (an impossibility here... I'm just sweating sooo much, I expect to be a size 8 when I get back) with a nice cold beer while we waited to see the Battambang bats leaving the cave. We waited quite a while which meant we were 'forced' to have another beer! The bats were amazing, at first you just saw one or two then there was a steady stream of them coming out, we watched them for about half an hour, but apparently they take about 2 hours to all come out, an incredible amount of bats! On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a lovely place for dinner, it felt like we were back in the UK! Gill and I tried the national dish tonight, it is called Amok and is made with coconut milk and served in banana leaves, I was dubious, but it tastes really good!

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