Hello everyone

Well, the fighting seems to have stopped for the moment and both sets of troops have withdrawn from the land which is in dispute. We are obviously safe and sound and, anyway, are a long way from the border troubles now. We are not crossing the border again as we decided to fly out of the local airport here to go to Phuket in Thailand.

Today we got up at 4.30am !!!!! AAAARRRRGGHH !! and left the hotel at 5.30am with the aim of seeing sunrise over the Temples of Angkor Watt (the photo above is of part of the Temple complex). Fun and games as there was no spectacular sunrise today because of the cloud. Ho hum. Never mind. We spent the next few hours going round various parts of the Temples, which are utterly amazing. They cover a huge area but we had our own tuk tuk driver with us who ferried us from Temple to Temple - thank goodness. We still had to walk a lot in the crippling humidity (we're hot and sweaty again) so we went back to the hotel at 11.30 to get some rest. We were going to eat before going out again at 3pm but fell asleep and didn't wake up until 2.40, so our driver had to wait a little for us while we woke up and chucked some tea and coffee down our throats. We ate in town at a nice little Khmer restaurant and hit the "markets" (I use the term loosely). Lots of stalls selling nearly the same stuff, but we still managed to pick up a couple of bits and pieces.

Anyway, now back at our gorgeous hotel and thinking about going for a swim. Trying to decide if we'll get bitten even more if we are in the pool as we have already been bitten alive here. We have very attractive red lumps on various parts of the body, but there we go. Hopefully the anti-malaria tablets will do the trick and keep us healthy !!\

We are still having trouble with our phones here and the internet doesn't always work but I'm sure things will improve when we get to Thailand again on Sunday.

Lots and lots of love to everyone and thanks so much for messages and e-mails.

Issy and Pat/Tish

PS: credit crunch? what credit crunch? had supper for 4 quid today (2 quid each) and 3 quid yesterday. And those were expensive meals. It's a hard life.