Now to tell you about the hundreds of temples in Siem Reap. The next day, we set out at 8am for the Roulous group, the oldest temples around, dating from about 800 BC. The first one we saw was a crumbling but impressive little place soon to be superceded by the various others we visited that day . Here, a monk started up a conversation with us to practice his English, and to ask for some money to buy supplies for his students as we later found out, where he asked for a grammatical explanation of the difference between "could" and "can". I fumbled an answer that was neither here nor there and then retreated from that path of conversation. The next few temples were all slightly bigger and better preserved, by which I mean they weren't entirely supported by wooden frames, and some had some amazing carvings into the sandstone of Hindu and Buddhist icons. Many of the temples in Siem Reap have been converted at some point in their lives as successions of kings advocated either Buddhism or Hinduism although the iconography of each is somewhat mixed in Cambodia anyway . The steps in each tend to be very steep and narrow - we're not sure why, either because they weren't skilled at step-building, or as I think I've heard before, it forces you to hunch and look down as you climb, so your head is always bowed to the shrine at the top. The best thing is that not many bits are off-limits so you can really explore the long corridors and many little rooms. It is just like being Indiana Jones! Everything is impressive, down to the pillars and doorways. Where there is stone, it is carved, and carved elaborately with leaves, monkeys, Vishnus, Buddhas and snakes. A boy guiding us told us that all the pieces of sandstone were carried from the mountains by elephants God knows how they did this .That afternoon, we returned tired and all begged out. Siem Reap has loads of beggars as well as loads of landmine victims who sell books or play music to earn money, as well as an unusual number of orphanages in a town of only 150,000 people. Another phonomenon is that of the sellers. They try immensely hard to get you to buy and follow you as far as they dare, reminding you, "If you want anything you come back to me, maybe later you buy". Many are children who show you their postcards and count them in English and just about any other language. A 7 year old girl counted 1-10 to me in English, Spanish, German, French and Dutch I had to ask her what language the Dutch was! . They whine, "three bracelets, one dollar", "you buy from me so I can go to school" and do puppy dog eyes at you which really cranks up the guilt you already felt.The next morning we got up at 4.30am to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat, the daddy of all the temples. We got into the tuk tuk, our driver looking quite spritely and drove in the dark to the gates. A few people were there, and by 5.00am it was filling up. It was really beautiful and a bit cooler than the usual blistering heat. We wondered round, although we found that the central temple was roped off. It is the complex as a whole that is impressive it can be seen on Google Earth , with a huge moat and a 3.6km long wall around the outside, as well as four library buildings in the grounds. The Khmers Cambodian people love it so much it's on their flag! Next we drove to the Angkor Thom temples. On our way we passed the elephant ride station and took a minute to check out the elephants, and then saw monkeys on the road scratching their bums. We first went to the Bayon temple which has hundreds of faces carved into it of all shapes and sizes - cool but a little eary. Then we looked around various others temples - by this time the memory of one was blending into the next - which were OK. On a journey to the loo between temples, I had an unfortunate accident where I slipped up in the mud trying to make a quick getaway from some sellers. Bum, calfs and hands thoroughly dirty, and Wass doing his best to hold in fits of laughter, I had to make the walk of shame there and back after an attempted clean-up. I was cheered up by a notable temple, Ta Prohm, where Tombraider was filmed. It has been taken over by trees with massive 5-10m roots delving their way into the crevices of the stone and it is obvious why it was chosen as a film-set. That afternoon we had a well-earned rest. We went to bed early ready to get up the next morning to go to Battambang. The bus journey was supposed to take 6 hours, but the gods must have been smiling on us because it only took 3! We arrived, had lunch and then went out on another tuk tuk excursion. This time it was firstly to a random crocodile farm just outside the town. Saftey was non-existent, you just had to clamber over metal poles and along slim concrete walkways with no railings. We survived to continue our journey through villages and remote roads. We stopped to see how rice paper and noodles are made and a gathering of children surrounded us. Following this, we went to another killing field, where there was a nother stupa with more bones in it. The driver then began to tell us about the Khmer Rouge, and we discovered he had been under the regime! He was 16 in 1975 when his family where forced to leave Phnom Penh and survived the horrors. He told us how he used to eat raw mice, snails, crabs and crickets, how he survived malaria, slept in the mud and snuck out at night to gather unripe bananas from the trees. He lied to the officers about his origins, his name, his hometown. He then spent 9 years in a refugee camp and has had 8 ! children, his first in 1980 when the regime ended. After this, we went to the bamboo train. Most of Cambodia's railway lines are no longer used, and no passenger trains exist, only cargo. It's basically a bamboo raft with a motrbike motor on it. And doesn't it go! The track was in shoddy condition and the boy driving it powered along like there was no tomorrow. There's nothing to hold you in, you just sit on a mat and pray you don't come off or derail. Wass didn't look like he was having much fun and the rain was starting to come down. We reached a bridge where another two trains were coming towards us. They solve this by simply stopping and turning the train around by lifting it off and back on to the tracks. The return journey was memorable. Firstly a squirrel jumped onto the track and then tried to outrun us on the rail. Obviously, it couldn't compete with the motor and we watched in horror as it went under the wheel and we felt the bump and crunch as we drove over it. Then an unidentified bug jumped on me and I freaked out. I was screaming and flapping, so Wass hesitantly flicked it off as the boy leaned over to have a look at what the commotion was all about, followed by a good laugh. We got back to the starting point soaked and glad to be alive, with many a dead fly on our faces and chests.This morning we went out on the tuk tuk again. We again drove through countryside to reach a big hill with a prison turned temple, torture caves and some old machine guns at the top. The drive was some seriously extreme tuk tuk-ing. Dirt tracks are covered in potholes, muddy slides and stones. Wass got a couple of bumps to the head and I nearly smashed my sunglasses. On the upside, we saw loads of village people who waved and said hello and we saw proper rural life in Cambodia. Then we went to a place where there are hundreds of fruit bats living in a tree outside a monastry. Then we went to the "Golden Gate Bridge", a rickety wobbly bridge over a river, made from planks, that motorbikes happily drive over. Tomorrow we go to our last country in Asia I am breathing a sigh of relief , Thailand. We get an all day bus to Bangkok.
