today, still in phnom penh, me and louisa visited a russian market, a warren of alleyways that seemed to be underground as it was shaded from the scorching sun, thank god! it was full of silks and buddhas and funny little pots with tubes coming out that i assume were some sort of drug-taking instrument / soemthing to do with a ritual...?! anyway, steered clear of all that authentic cambodian stuff and got a gucci watch for 7 pounds that looks totally real and actually tells the right time (at the moment)! loads of western clothes there as everything from home is made in cambodia so they have all the surplus stuff there, so the place was full of tops from gap and ralph lauren etc, very tempting to but the whole lot seeing as everything was a dollar! quite bizarre out here how they deal almost exclusively in dollars, only using their Riel if the amount is under one dollar, as they have no coins in circulation, although this does make calulating things easier for us! not sure how much i mentioned last time about the temples at angkor - the best one by far was ta prohm which is completely dominated by the massive tree roots growing out of it's doorways, though this one was closely followed by the main one, angkor wat, which had really ornate engravings of wars between hindu gods and i'm not sure who, all over the walls, including on one side the story of Lord Rama fighting some enemy with his MONKEY ARMY!!!! at what point is it a good idea to defend your country with a bunch of monkeys?! speaking of monkeys though, just outside the temple there was a suspicious looking monkey that we took some pictures of, thinking he'd run off, but he actually came towards us, at which point louisa made me stand next to him to take a picture of us together, in which i look utterly terrified! anyway, tomorrow's our last day in phnom penh, as we've got to get down to a national park to see all that before going to vietnam on saturday... it's all moving so fast, we realised today that we've been away for a month but it only seems like days because we've been so busy, but at the same time everything we've done seems like ages ago because we've done so much! enough from me, keep your messages coming and let me know what you're all up to!