I just can’t believe I am going to write about the final leg of our journey… The last days have gone so fast and we have done so much….here is a summary…

From Phnom Pehn we got the bus up to Siam Reap, a busy town that attracts tourists because of the nearby Angkor temples. The temples are just incredible! They were built by the Khmer civilisation around the 11th century, and the number and diversity of buildings is amazing. We bought a three-day pass to visit the temples and hired a tuk-tuk driver to get us around.

Our first temple was Angkor Wat, the largest and most famous of all the temples. The most dramatic thing about Angkor Wat is the scale – massive, particularly the approach to the temple over a huge moat and walkway. We examined the hundreds of metres of bas reliefs carved into the walls and climbed through the maze of passages to the top of the temple, taking photographs of dark passages with sunlit monks tending to Buddha statues.

Next we went to Ta Prohm, which is like something straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. When the French rediscovered the temples in the 19th century, they chose this temple to leave in its ‘natural state’ as an example how the jungle had taken over. It is stunning with huge fig trees growing around and out of the stonework.

We quickly learnt that the temperature just got too hot in the afternoon to enjoy the temples, so on our second day we met our tuk-tuk driver at 5:15am and watched the sunrise from one of the temples overlooking a lake. We then explored in the relative cool and quiet of the early morning. The highlights of this second day were at Angkor Thom, the walled city. The Elephant Terrace and Terrace of the Leper King had beautiful relief carvings on a massive scale. We explored the hidden trenches that had been filled in shortly after the reliefs were made and so they are amazingly well preserved. Four huge gateways make up the entrances to the walled city. They really are incredible….i will try to describe them….Each gateway has four human faces, one facing in each direction, sculpted into the gate’s tower. Each face is made up of over 70 blocks of stone. Beyond the gates a causeway stretches about fifty metres across a moat. Lining the causeways are many three metre high figures of Gods pulling on a Naga (long, ugly, seven headed serpent/fish thing). Furthermore the road to each of the gateways stretches through the jungle, for about two miles, in a perfectly straight line – its pretty dramatic stuff!

On the third day, we watched the sunrise over Angkor Wat and then explored the Bayon temple. Bayon uses a mass of face-towers to create a stone mountain with multiple peaks. We loved the temples and our time wandering around the ruins taking photographs. It was nice to wonder at such a rich, impressive period in Cambodia’s history, which contrasts so sharply with its recent, bloody history.

From Siam Reap we journeyed to Battambang; deciding to avoid the poor quality roads, we opted for the ‘five hour, picturesque speed boat ride’ (that’s how it was marketed). This turned out to be possibly the most memorable journey of the entire trip. An hours bus ride got us to the little river port where we boarded our boat – an opened sided long tail boat (incredibly hot and slow) with planks of wood for seats (very uncomfortable). The river was swarming with boats of all descriptions and a JCB was pulling mud from the bed to try and deepen it a little. Judging by the colour (dodgy grey) and the smell (rank) of the water, I reckon it was about 9 parts raw sewage and 1 part water! We were glad to get going (very slowly) and out onto a huge freshwater lake. For some reason, it was felt necessary to change the propeller at one stage in the middle of the lake, which was quite amusing. Also, the driver twice cut the engine, climbed out onto the propeller and used a hacksaw to disentangle old fishing nets from around the blades. We crossed the vast lake and then chugged down a river for the remainder of the journey. Tiny floating villages lined most of the route; kids played in the water, ladies worked at drying fish outside of shockingly poor houses and men tended to their nets. There were floating garages and even floating beauty salons. After seven hours of boat journey we pulled up at a little jetty – hooray, we have arrived, but oh no! Apparently the river level was too low to go all the way by boat so we had to get a truck for the last two hours of the journey. We loaded our bags into the back of a Toyota Hilux and I thought to myself – where are we going to go? We managed to fit 18 people onto the back of the Hilux (with all the bags) before we set off. There was no road, but instead a track that had been cut through endless bushes and trees – we spent two hours trying to ignore the pain of branches whipping over our heads and shoulders. I was pretty gutted when within about five minutes my faithful straw hat was ripped off my head, never to be seen again. After a total of 10 hours, we arrived exhausted and dirty in Battambang.

Battambang was not touristy at all (its too hard to get to!) and we felt like we experienced a bit of real life Cambodia which was nice. We hired a car and a guide for an afternoon and went out to a local limestone outcrop. We climbed the hill to find a huge Buddha figure and some killing caves – evidence of further Khmer rouge atrocities. We hadn’t realised before but learnt that our guide was the only member of his entire family to survive the Khmer Rouge and civil war. We listened as he bravely told us how his parents and siblings had died and his experiences during this time. It was pretty hard to take!

On a lighter note, we decided to do another cookery school; this time Khmer cuisine (Cambodian). This was rather more basic than the cookery school we did in Thailand – more authentic I suppose. We went along to the local market to buy the ingredients we would need and it wasn’t long before we lost our appetites!!! One of the things to buy was fresh fish, well the ‘snake catfish’ that we needed were still slithering around in a big bucket and every couple of minutes one would jump out of the bucket in a bid for freedom. One little old women who was gutting fish on the footpath decided to throw her slop bucket all over my feet – I wasn’t best pleased! The meat looked anything but fresh with flies everywhere – the ‘butchers’ were crouched on their chopping blocks with all the different cuts of meat spread around them. We saw spiders, black chickens, insects, turtles, worms etc all for sale. We also decided to stop drinking anything with ice in it; we had been enjoying fruit shakes up to this point (these contain blitzed up ice). However, we learnt that all the ice is made from river water and one of the river abstraction points is just downstream of the hospital outlet…nice.

The actual cooking, in contrast, was great fun – we made three dishes and ate all of them (even knowing where we’d bought the food from!). The food in Asia is SOOOO good. At one stage I had a curry dish for every meal over three days! Including breakfast!

A ten-hour bus journey got us to Bangkok, our very last destination. We decided to splash out on our last accommodation and stayed at ‘The Buddy Lodge’ on Khoasan road. Our room had a four-poster bed and a balcony bigger than some of the rooms we had stayed in! It was such a relaxing contrast to the busy street outside. As this was our last stop we could afford to take on a bit of extra luggage and so shopped for pressies – Bangkok is an absolute shopping heaven and our haggling skills have definitely improved! We did a bit of shopping for ourselves also, utilising the cheap tailors by getting a suit made each. It was fun deciding on fabrics, styles etc and returning for multiple personal fittings!

We checked out a ping-pong show one evening – very talented ladies! Another night, we went to a Thai puppet show, much classier entertainment but pretty boring.

We visited the Wat Pho reclining Buddha which is famous for being so big. It is 46 metres long and 15m high, which makes it pretty dramatic. We even found time for one last massage.

We had been refusing to think about it too much, but unfortunately the time to actually go home had finally arrived. The thing is, we didn’t want the trip to end!!! Lots of contemplation and a few tears and we realised that we had to go home. So that was it… the best five months of our lives!!!! …. Until the next trip :-) he he