Of horrible histories and happy herbs

Incense burning at a shrine atop Wat Phnom.

A big hello to my readers at Cope Allman, who are never, ever reading this blog at work, I'm sure, because they are all far too busy working.......!!! Thanks for reading and keeping up with my travels!

Phnom Penh summed up in one picture, where history collides with the modern world, with some delightful consequences

We're off to Kampot tomorrow (also confusingly known locally as Kompot here - but you can search for both online) and I might not be online for a few days, so I thought I'd update you on our busy, emotional week.

Taken at the Royal Palace. This is a bit behind the scenes. I'd set myself the challenge of filling my pictures with colour on this day as the sky was so overcast. This is where some of the ceremonial kit is stored, and the gardeners have used the space in front to stack some of their plants. Those pink flowers are everywhere in Cambodia and are really beautiful.

After Siem Reap, Cambodia's capital city was a bit of an urban awakening. Everything about Siem Reap is chilled, the temples are peaceful and still, everyone seems to know everyone else. Phnom Penh is to Siem Reap as London is to Chipping Tinyville back home. It's a busy city that never sleeps and like Medan, our fave city in Sumatra, you need balls of steel and eyes in the back of your head just to cross the road. You get over your fear of stepping out in front of cars here fast, and you become accustomed to sharing roads, pavements and gutters with rapidly speeding motos and rickshaws.

This building in the heart of Phnom Penh opposite the National Museum has intrigued us for the entirety of our visit. It is entirely abandoned and just falling down, but looks like a throwback to the colonial French days. Why doesn't anyone want it? It doesn't even look as though anyone squats there!

Less exciting and more heartbreaking in Phnom Penh is Cambodia's still huge problem with poverty and the ever global problem of the gap between the rich and poor. Street children line the pavements and as with Siem Reap and Medan, we have been told not to give money to children as they rarely, if ever, get to keep it. The problems with landmines are also visible here and you see amputees outside every tourist attraction selling pirate books (yes, I'm still buying them, I'm carrying the equivalent of a local bloody library, but I'm still buying them - I'm a book whore). Cambodia is a Buddhist country, so with people begging or selling, if you can give a couple of thousand riel, do. The only time we don't is if we have run out. For this reason, and for my love of books, I have been befriended by two booksellers on the waterfront in particular, who now stop to say hi and shoot the breeze. There is still a social stigma attached to amputees in some parts of Cambodia, and many booksellers carry signs telling you that they are not begging, they are working.

The National Museum, where this very brave young man was atop a beam fixing something or other. If you can zoom in you'll see one of the best smiles in Cambodia - this guy and I chattered away in different languages for a while before he thanked me for taking his picture and got back to work!

I had read a lot about Cambodia's troubled past back in Siem Reap, but if you want to find out about it in detail, then Phnom Penh is the place to visit, but be warned, this is no casual history lesson, and be prepared to shed a few tears. On our second day, we visited S21 or Tuol Sleng, a primary school before the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975, then a torture camp for those who the KR deemed 'enemies of the Revolution'. The KR (or DK as they are sometimes known) wanted to herald in a new era that returned the former glory of Cambodia to its Angkor empire days (the period in which the famous Wat was built), and thought the best way to do this was to create a nation of peasant agriculture workers, living only from the land and rejecting the material inequalities of capitalism.

Sarun, our driver for our first two days in Phnom Penh. Sarun explained to us that like many tuk tuk drivers, he rents his bike for $5 a day and has to make at least this to make ends meet. His home is in the rural villages several dozen kilometres outside Phnom Penh, so the tuk tuk he rents is also his main home.

Whether this began as a good idea amongst the small group of intellectuals who first came up with it - including the most famous leader Saloth Sar or Pol Pot as he called himself, who was an intellectual educated in France - is a moot point. Somewhere along the way, perhaps as a result of the Khmer Rouge being forced into exile when Cambodia became a US pawn in the Vietnam War, the KR became an extreme, heavily factionalised and paranoid despotic regime, responsible for the deaths and suffering of a vast number of people.

A long gallery next to the Palace buildings, I fell in love with this gallery and wrote a hundred story scenes in my mind just standing looking at it.

Tuol Sleng was where people were sent prior to being driven out to their deaths a few kilometres away at a place called Cheong Ek, or The Killing Fields, as they were christened by Dith Pran (the subject of the now famous film on Cambodia during this time). It is now run by the government as a museum and its chief exhibit is row after row of photographs taken in the camp. Each prisoner was photographed on arrival and extensive documents were kept on each one, including their biography and details of their 'confessions'. These documents are now used by both historians and as a part of the ongoing trial of the man who ran S21, Duch.

Visnu at the National Museum. In his original pose, he is lying on the primal cosmic ocean that brought forth all life. As in the Angkor temples, Cambodia's religious history reflects both its Buddhist and Hindu influences.

The victims brought here were primarily officials of the previous government and their families and associates, intellectuals and later, even many members of the KR themselves, as the leaders became increasingly paranoid of an uprising from within their ranks. The methods of torture were outrageously cruel and of the 20,000 people brought here, only a small number are known to have survived. Walking through row after row of the images of people killed gives you only a small sense of the sheer scale of the genocide in Cambodia and the terrible cruelty that was inflicted on the country as a result. Almost no one in the country was unaffected, as the KR routinely separated families and made chief amongst its methods the routine brainwashing of children, which meant that children were often responsible for sending their own parents to their deaths.

The intersection between Sisowath and Sothea Ros Boulevards on the waterfront, this is one of the Wats or pagodas here where monks live, teach, study and worship. We pass this almost every day, at least once, on foot or in a tuk tuk!

The following day we visited Cheong Ek itself, The Killing Fields where the inmates of S21 were, almost without exception, killed and their bodies piled in huge mass graves. Today Cheong Ek - one of over 340 sites like it in the country - has not been completely excavated, and the 8000 skulls that lie within the huge, 17 level stupa on the site is only a small reflection of the vast number of dead who rest there. Today the site seems peaceful and at first glance, a beautiful open landscape where people walk in silent reflection, apart from the low voices of the guides who steer groups around the site. We hired a guide for our visit, who was very kind in helping us to understand the sheer scale and complexity of the devastation brought down on Cambodia during the four years in which the KR were in power.

" I think that the genocide in Cambodia is worse than the Nazis in some ways," our guide told us, "Because it was Cambodian killing Cambodian, not about race, not about anything. Sometimes children brainwashed to kill their own families, brother against brother. There was no reason, no understanding why. Just what I think, but I think is worse. Many of those who killed people here were children, you understand, children who killed people. Now they are maybe forty, fifty. Most of the old Khmer Rouge, they live in the north west of Cambodia now, still apart from others, but all still alive. Most never brought to trial."

The regal beauty of the Royal Palace. Although it was overcast on the day we visited, the splendour of these buildings shines through - in stark contrast to the children begging outside and the amputees who are selling you books on the street.

This is the real complexity of the KR and of Cambodian history, that those who joined the KR often had no choice themselves, a situation our guide describes as 'kill or be killed.' It is not easy to find someone to blame, an ambiguity that sits at the heart of Cambodian culture now. It is impossible to know how a nation recovers from this kind of tragedy in its recent past.

The Dance Pavilion at the Royal Palace on a very grey day.

We have spent our remaining days in Phnom Penh in much lighter pursuits, as primarily Cambodia is a country of hope and of great hopefulness. We have found its people to be friendly and most of all, incredibly good humoured and this is the first country in which I have bought a phrase book, because everyone is so eager to help you when you try to speak Cambodian, although many of its sounds simply do not exist in our language. I am hopeful yet that I may pick it up one day!

Even more of the Royal Palace buildings. The public are only allowed into one quadrant of the whole site, still officially the residence of the King, so this is just a small percentage of the whole.
The grey building in front is the Napoleon III pavilion, a gift from Napoleon III to King Norodom in 1876 and made entirely of iron!

The National Museum offered a full afternoon's pleasure as we wandered amongst Buddhist and Hindu statues. It is customary here to make an offering to the chief Buddha's on display, which also act as shrines for those visiting, so we stopped every so often to collect from an attendant some garlands of jasmine and to offer them to the Buddha along with the standard few thousand riel or a dollar. The smell of jasmine in the museum was beautiful, and one attendant insisted I take a garland for myself after I also offered one to the Buddha, which I'm hoping was a compliment and not a sign that I smell.

The inner courtyard and gardens at the National Museum. As well as being a really peaceful and interesting place to burn some hours, the gardens are really beautiful in their own right and at the centre sits a red stone Buddha statue. For 500 riel, you can get two bags of fish food to feed the fish in the four lily ponds, too!

We visited the Royal Palace a couple of days ago, which was beautiful and breath-taking in equal measure, with its gold roofed buildings, murals, shrines, landscaped gardens and statues. Unfortunately, the day was cloudy when we went, but there was still a vast array of colour to be seen everywhere, including in the murals on the courtyard walls of the Reamker, Cambodian's epic poem which is based on the Ramayana, or tales of Rama and which we also saw at Angkor Wat.

Wat Phnom and Cambodia's largest clock. Yes, I said clock.

Yesterday we stopped off at Wat Phnom, the hill after which the city takes its name, and on which a huge stupa stands and several shrines to the Buddha. It is also home to the largest clock in Cambodia. Yes, I said clock. Despite these fantastic tourist draws, I went because I had read that for a dollar you could set free a sparrow that the sellers catch in large numbers and keep in cages at the top, and when the seller handed me the tiny trembling bird and showed me how to throw him into the sky, I did so with a great sense of relief for this tiny life. I wrote to my friend Lynda today that I wish I could throw my emotional baggage into the sky with the same gusto. The seller, sensing my now Cambodia-famous soft touch, told me that for $10 I could free the entire cage. I was tempted until I looked around and saw how many cages there were and realised that I could blow my entire budget on Wat Phnom.

And from the top.....Looking down Norodom Boulevard. The road names in Phnom Penh are subject to change, most back streets are numbered rather than names and there is often no order to the number. In addition, the same number is often given to more than one house on a street. Being a postman here must suck.

In addition to our touristy delights we have also frequented almost every market in Phnom Penh, including the Russian, Central and Night markets. Sometimes, when I look back on the days, I'm not sure how we find the time to eat, especially as for the first time we are also managing to lie in each day (our room doesn't have a window). But eat we have and do, and well. Our favourite place so far has been the discovery of Happy Herb Pizza, where, if you ask, the cook will throw some extra 'happy herb' on your pizza as topping, if you catch my drift...........

Happy Herb Pizza in the middle, and our other favourite haunt, The Pink Elephant, which has a great selection of veggie Khmer food (often a rarity - Cambodia's main diet is rice and fish. So much fish.....). This is Sisowith Boulevard, the waterfront overlooking the Tonle Sap river. Just down the road is a shop that sells pirate movies for a dollar. We watched Wolverine, it was great, though how one body can sustain the muscles Hugh Jackman is wearing in that movie is far beyond me. Not that I'm complaining......

I'll write soon with more news, but until then, my love to all. Peace and Happy Pizza out.

And it's goodbye from them. Monkeys on Wat Phnom.

Motorcycle Diary

That's me on the back of a bloody moto! Me! And our friend Pisith, the best moto driver in Cambodia!

Another big thank you to Kate for letting me use her pictures on this post. We haven't worked out the wifi situation in Phnom Penh yet and I'm at an internet cafe and don't want to risk sticking my hard drive into a foreign body - there are viruses out here, you know what I'm saying?

After three days of templage, you could be forgiven for thinking that we would be templed out. You are soooooo wrong. You know why? Because we are hardcore Templars. Oh yes.

After the temples of Angkor, which we thought were hard to beat, we wanted to go further afield, a little off the beaten track to some of the lesser spotted temples outside Siem Reap. We spoke to our friend and driver Richard about our options for travelling to Beng Mealea and Koh Ker.

"Yes. I can do this," he said, "I take you there. I've been many times, I take you on motos. Two bikes."

Motos are the local name for motorcycles here.

I am very dubious about this. I have never been on a motorcycle and I have a recurring memory of Shonagh's mum calling motorbike drivers 'organ donors' from when I was a kid.

Look, no landmines here - what a relief!

"I'll drive a bike," says Kate, who has never driven one before in her life.

"Yeah, ok," says Richard.

I feel obliged to step in here, "I think that is a very bad idea. Richard, Kate has never driven a motorbike before."

Richard is nothing if not quick to adapt, "Ok, no problem, I get other driver. We take two bikes, two passengers one bike, one passenger on other."

I'm not sure why this doesn't make me feel better, but it doesn't. I've seen motorbike drivers in South East Asia, in fact, I've seen the traffic in South East Asia and it's cosmically insane. There are no rules. It's like Fight Club. The first rule of South East Asia traffic is that there is no South East Asia traffic. Fact.

Our guide Tay at Beng Mealea

Ang is saying nothing, and Kate's travelling nickname has become Kate'll do it Dykes, so it's down to me.

"Er, maybe we could have a trial run," suggests Kate.

"Yeah, trial run," says Richard, "Sound like a plan. We go now."

I want to cry. Instead, I leap up and say, "Yes. We go now."

Two seconds later, I am wrapped around Richard as if we are Siamese twins and we're heading into the side streets of Siem Reap.

Look at that straight spine! Look at me on a moto! I will never get bored of this. Never!!

"If you kill me," I whisper hoarsely in his ear, "I will come back as a ghost and I will haunt you until your last day on earth."

"Yeah, ok." says Richard, with his customary cool.

After five minutes, Richard starts to have a coughing fit and I realise I am constricting his breathing and release my grip on his ribcage. He seems somewhat relieved. I realise that I have not yet died and start to breathe again and look around me. This isn't too bad.

When we get back to Happy Guest House, K and A cheer at me as we sail back into the yard on Richard's bike and I walk over to them.

"How was it?"

I stretch out my hands which are shaking so violently I could mix a Harvey Wallbanger without even attempting to move (seriously, I know this, I had one the other night).

Richard - what can I tell you, the chicks love him....

"It was like this," I tell them, nodding at my hands, "But it's actually ok. We should do it."

And so it is settled. The next day, Richard and I set off on one bike and his friend Pisith,
Kate and Ang set off on another. Twenty minutes later we are out on the straight, flat roads of Cambodia sailing along at a ridiculous speed and I am loving it.

Being on a moto takes some getting used to, but once I do, it is one of the best feelings ever. Better even than the speedboat, and I thought that was pretty exhilarating. But being a passenger on a moto feels like flying. It's fast and scary and the wind is in your face. I love it!

The gang at Koh Ker, Kate is the one behind the camera.

We swap bikes halfway along and I ride with Pisith, who we have not met before. Pisith is a student at University, he is only 21 years old and this is his first trip with tourists out to Koh Ker. Actually, we learn later, this is also Richard's first trip with tourists out to Koh Ker, in fact, it is both of their first trips to Koh Ker, full stop, as we learn approximately halfway through the trip when Richard gets a little lost.

But first we are off to Beng Mealea. This temple is less preserved than the temples around Siem Reap and is, in many places, a ruin. There is no equivalent to English Heritage here, so you are expected to be responsible for yourself and if you want to climb through, up and over the ruins, then it's at your own risk.

Still pumped with adrenaline from the motorcycle ride, suffice to say I do want to climb the ruins like tomb raider. However, you should not tackle Beng Mealea without a guide, not only because it isn't that safe if you don't know what you're doing, but also because they know stuff that you don't, such as what it is you're looking at, for example. We do not realise this at first and so turn down the offers from the first two guides we meet. However, this is ok, because a wiry middle-aged man, Tay, soon comes to my rescue and helps me clamber through a section of the ruins I was clearly trapped in, and then starts to guide us round in the most charmingly accented English I have ever heard.

Oh, it's me on a moto - what a surprise! Doing something really weird with my face, I think we'd just hit a bump!

Tay makes our trip to Beng Mealea thoroughly enjoyable and is genuinely delighted when we give him some money at the end. After the temple, we head across the country road to Harmony Farm, an orphanage, school, and sustainable farm NGO that we had heard about in Siem Reap. We meet Marli again, the assistant director at Harmony Farm and whose enthusiasm for the place, the children and the staff is unmistakable and highly contagious. She is not romantic about the challenges of volunteering, or about the difficulties of raising money and support for a project like Harmony Farm, but the Farm is currently providing education, care and support to over 100 children from the local community, many of whom cannot attend school on a daily basis and without which their opportunities for education and indeed, childhood, would be severely limited.

Harmony Farm really needs ongoing support and they are currently raising money for solar panels to replace the overly expensive and inefficient generator that currently runs for a few hours a day. You can - and please do - find out more about and join me in donating money to Harmony Farm here: Give them cash please!!

Even better, if you fancy a trip to Cambodia that's a bit more than sightseeing, why not volunteer there? Email Marli on marli@harmonyfarmcambodia.org for more info.

Band shot number two! Rock and roll!! Richard is the one behind the camera...

After Harmony Farm, we head out to Koh Ker. Getting there is a bit of an adventure, not only because Richard has slightly fabricated his knowledge of the area (it's not a worry as everyone is very friendly), but because, unlike the tarmacked roads of the journey so far, the last couple of hours journey to Koh Ker is only accessible via a dirt road. This is a different experience and as I do not know Pisith so well, I spend the first ten minutes clutching on to the back of the bike and hoping that it will be ok.

But at the point where the bumps in the road are so frequent, I am actually bouncing off the back, I decide the time has come to swallow my pride.

"Er, Pisith?"

"Yes Sarah?"

"Erm, I'm actually pretty scared on this bit, can I hold onto you now please?"

Pisith laughs a little, "Yes Sarah, it's ok."

One of my fave shots of the trip so far - nice work and band shot number 3!

The ice between us firmly broken, Pisith and I start to chat a bit more. The thing about dirt roads is that you have to go a bit slower and because you go a bit slower, you don't have to wear your helmet - honest Mum, he's a really good driver and it was perfectly safe!!

The next day we head out to spend the morning at the temples and this is great as, because they are less tourist populated, Pisith and Richard can come in with us (usually your drivers have to wait for you outside). The two of them are natural-born posers and want their photos taken every ten minutes, but we get some great band shots. By one o'clock it is time to head back to Siem Reap, and so we're all back on the bikes and away.

This time, as I have gotten more confident, and because I bully him a bit, Pisith goes faster than on our outward journey, so fast in fact that we leave the others behind and then have to wait by the roadside for them to catch up again! But there is no doubt in my mind that our moto journey to Koh Ker will be one of my most enduring memories of this trip, and that the friendships we have made at Happy will never leave me.

In case there was any doubt of this though, Richard invites us out on our last night to one of the 'locals' bars where only Khmers drink. This is a strange place, with Khmer karaoke (enduring memory number 25, Richard singing karaoke blasted out of his face) and the serving of 'slow' beer, which is lager served with huge wedges of ice. We were soon joined by Pisith and another Happy driver, Adam, and then we were soon smashed out of our faces. Really smashed. I don't even remember going to bed, let alone getting home.

And here is something we actually saw over the last couple of days - the main temple at Koh Ker, Prasat Thom

The next day we are up at 6am - yes, 6am - to head off to the country's capital Phnom Penh by bus. As we creep out, we almost trip over Richard, who is unconscious in the hallway.

Ang is vomiting at the first truck stop, but I manage to last until we arrive at the capital before bringing the contents of my stomach forth. I swear never to drink again. Again. Our new guest house, The Royal is lovely, and Phnom Penh is vastly different from Siem Reap. There is a far more city-like feel here, but now, on our third day, I am starting to get a like and a feel for the place. But I'll tell you more of that in my next post.

Missing you, my homies. Peace out.

Here's Ang and I. over-excited at Richard's singing onstage at the local's bar in Siem Reap - yes, I have had far too much slow beer at this point....

Cambodia Dreaming

Angkor Wat at sunrise on my birthday. Priceless and almost indescribable.

It's been five days since my birthday already! Where have they gone? And we've done so much since then, I don't know how I'll squeeze it all into one post without boring you all to death, but I'll try. There's going to be a lot of photos in this one.....!

Angkor Wat - there are so many spaces like this, including many long galleries. This is a part of the temple called the Cruciform Cloister.

We did a day of temples on the day before my birthday, and managed to see seven - of very different shapes and sizes - all of them fascinating and intricately, elegantly beautiful. When the Europeans stumbled across the Angkor temples, they at first assumed them to be Roman or Greek in origin, concluding - very wrongly and with our typical arrogance - that the Khmer civilisation could not be responsible for such incredible architecture.

The North West gorupa or entrance hall at Angkor Wat, with a guardian lion. This was taken at about 7am, yes, 7am!!!

There is frequent reference, even now, in the guides you read, of the Europeans 'discovering' the temples, but of course they didn't. The Khmer people never forgot they were there, though many were overgrown on their rediscovery in the nineteenth century and many have always been used for worship by local people as Hindu and Buddhist temples.

The Red Buddha, one of many beheaded by the Khmer Rouge, who killed not only Buddhists, but people who wore glasses, and those who spoke more than one language in their doomed quest to return the whole country to a nation of farming peasants.

Buddhism replaced Hinduism as the Khmer religion, and the temples reflect both forms of spirituality, with scenes from the Mahabarata, the Ramayana and many statues of Buddha throughout each site. Vishnu and Shiva are most frequently seen, but we have also become familiar with many other Hindu gods and their 'mounts' (the creatures that carried the god like a personal tuk tuk, and who often fought alongside them).

Garuda on the Elephant Terrace at Angkor Thom.

My favourites are Garuda, Vishnu's mount (Vishnu had many incarnations or avatars, and it took us a while to figure this out!), who is half man, half bird, Hanuman, the monkey god, who was a loyal friend to Vishnu in his incarnation as Rama (whose adventures are laid out in the Ramayana) and Ganesha, the elephant god and son of Shiva and Parvati.

The South East Tower at Angkor Wat - showing the amazing architecture. There are five towers like this in a quincunx - sounds obscene doesn't it, but apparently it means five towers, one in the centre and four evenly spaced around it in a square or rectangle - brilliant!

My birthday wish was to see the sun rise at Angkor Wat, and thanks to my two very own birthday pixies, this wish duly came true. Angkor Wat is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, and it seems that around every corner there is something new to inspire, delight or amaze. The ancient Khmer architecture has an entirely unique style, and Angkor Wat is typical in this. We got up at 4am (yes, I really mean 4am) to leave at about 5am with our now regular tuk tuk driver, Richard.

Vishnu with 8 arms at the entrance gallery, Angkor Wat. There was a really strange photo shoot going on just around the corner from this statue, with women in wedding dresses and loads of photographers. After the mythological spirituality of the temple, this was really surreal!

I love tuk tuks and I wish that we could adopt them in the UK, although I know they would never pass Health and Safety regulations. I would like to drive a tuk tuk in the UK, I would like this to be my primary means of making a living and in the evenings or in quiet periods of the day I could write the great English novel (I haven't worked on it once here yet - I'm assuming it's not time).

Our tuk tuk!! This has been our main method of transport around Siem Reap so far, driven by our friend and guide, Richard, who takes great care of us and who takes our lengthy visits to each temple in his stride and spent his day off with us and took us to meet his family.
"Free of charge," he insisted, "Because you are the best customers!"

When we visit temples, Richard waits outside with the tuk tuk. We lost six hours in Angkor Wat, wandering the different enclosures and levels, admiring the reliefs on the walls and the intricate architecture. Richard thought perhaps we had got lost or died and came to look for us. Twice.

The perfect departure from Angkor Wat on your birthday - 4 Japanese women spelling out L-O-V-E!! Best of all, this was their second attempt, in the first one they spelt out E-V-O-L.

"Oh my God." He said, flatly, on our return, "Oh my God. You have been gone six hours. Most people, two or three. You, six. Oh. My. God."

Many of the reliefs on the walls in the temples are of apsaras, the famous celestial dancers who danced for the Gods, and I must have a million photographs of them in my possession now. The thing is, although you see them at every temple they never cease to be as beautiful as the first time you see them, and I promise you that you never tire of them.

An Apsara at Banteay Kdei temple - we had a great guide here who provided us with loads of great information on the temple that we would not have otherwise known. After this though, I picked up a gorgeous guidebook for $5 from one of the sellers outside the temples, a young lad who I refused the book from over and over until I was finally persuaded by his sheer relentlessness and the power of his sales pitch - NLP was invented in Cambodia, I swear!!

Unfortunately, many of the temples suffered from neglect - many were overgrown with trees and one has been preserved in this fashion and featured in Tombraider, we were told on our visit!

Ta Phrom - or the Tomb Raider temple as we were told - with silk cotton trees growing on the inside over the temples, almost like snakes coiling over tree branches.

And from the inside! Ta Phrom is preserved with the trees intact deliberately whereas in other temples they have been removed. Keeping them in situ is a careful balance as they can damage the temples if they are not looked after properly.

A statue seller inside Ta Phrom, smiling here at us because we had just bought three tiny statues. Some of the sellers and children sellers are even canny enough to charge you for taking their photo! Not this guy, though, who seemed happy to be asked.

During the rule of the Khmer Rouge, who outlawed Buddhism (amongst so many other things), the KR troops cut the heads from many of the Buddhas in the temples. I have been taking a crash course in my spare time on Cambodian history, reading various internet sources, and the rule of the Khmer Rouge and the resulting genocide of the Cambodian people is one of the most horrific in history. I won't give give you a potted version here, but if you're interested, a great first stop resource can be found at From Slideshow to Genocide

One of the temples at Prasat Kravan, dedicated to Lakshmi. This is the only temple built with red bricks in this way and this relief has been restored to its original strange beauty.

Cambodia's history is - like many South East Asian countries - intricately tied up with the history of the surrounding nations, particularly Thailand and Vietnam, and with the past battles of superpowers such as China, USA and USSR for and against Communism. This legacy has left behind a long and broad trail of corruption throughout social and political life, that makes it very hard for the majority of the population here. There is a huge gap between the rich and the poor, although you can choose to avoid it in Siem Reap if you wish, or rather to close your eyes to it.

Chao Say Tevoda main temple with the keeper of the shrine to Buddha approaching to guide us to the shrine.

The keeper of the shrine at Chao Say Tevoda temple - who taught us the right way to devote incense at the shrines to Buddha. You donate a dollar or so, the keeper hands you three incense sticks which you clasp in your palms like a prayer and move forwards and backwards three times before placing the incense in a pot of sand before the Buddha.

Tourism has had a massive impact on Siem Reap, which has rapidly expanded as a base for touring the temples, and it is possible for Westerners to stay in posh hotels with full amenities (not that we can talk, Happy Guest House is the highest luxury we've had so far - they even give you towels!!), take tuk tuks everywhere, shop only in the malls and go to the restaurants and bars on Pub Street - I kid you not, it's real name, Pub Street, and filled with Western bars and restaurants where the only Khmers you'll see are serving you.

A great example of the intricate detail of the carvings on many of the temples and their surrounding buildings. This one is a detail from a pediment (carving over the top of an entrance) at Banteay Sray, one of the smallest temples and made to a miniature scale. Some of the doorways are only just over a metre tall, which was hilarious for me to watch as loads of tall tourists rendered themselves almost unconscious - repeatedly. Glenn, should we come to Cambodia at any point, I'm sooooooooooooooooooooo bringing you here.

The only place you really can't avoid the poverty is at the temples, where the desperation of the vendors, who flock to you as soon as you leave each one, is palpable and heartbreaking. Children offer bracelets, trinkets and small, traditional Khmer scarves for sale, lowering the price to ridiculous levels when you refuse. We've been offered up to 20 scarves and bracelets for just 1$US. The other day I was offered a traditional Khmer violin for a dollar, which is ridiculous. Although haggling is par for the course here, and can seem like a game to us in which we vie for the cheapest price, the poverty that lies beneath each transaction is very real, and I usually steer by a price that I would find ridiculous back home and stop bargaining before I feel like a complete fascist capitalist pig dog.

A child selling flutes at Banteay Kdei - not only was he selling but this little lad could play, too. Children his age gather in groups around and outside the temples (they are not usually allowed inside) and point to some very serious poverty in Cambodia. It is not unusual to be swooped on by large groups of children and teenagers all selling identical products, most commonly bootleg books, bracelets, trinkets made from palm leaves, scarves and flutes. The problem is if you buy from one in the group, they all want you to buy, so we learnt to pick our moments! These experiences are pretty heart breaking, but exceptionally commonplace.

The US$ is the main currency of Cambodia, with the national currency only really used for change or in daily use in the markets for Khmers. It's a weird system at first, but oddly you do get used to running with two currencies after a while!!

We've tried to do the tourist thing ethically here, and Cambodia has more opportunities for this than any other country we've visited so far: offering NGO hotels and cafe's (like the Singing Tree) where money goes to local projects. You have to do your research though, as corruption is rife even here, with fake NGO's being set up as a way of making money. All NGO's should be registered, but the registration process is very expensive, so it can be hard even for genuine NGO's to register. This sort of bureaucracy can be typical of Cambodia, it seems.

My favourite - probably not including Angkor Wat, which stands alone really - the Bayon temple, with its many faces of Buddha. Inside it is like a maze and when we went, it was late afternoon and it had just finished raining. Inside it was dark and eerie in the humid half light of the falling sun, haunting and unforgettable.

In addition to the sunrise and our visit to Angkor Wat, Kate and Ang had booked us into the most lovely hotel for my birthday night and the following day. They also bought me a lovely set of miniature statues of the Buddha and two Thai monks, as well as a lovely pendant of the Buddha from Thailand, the latter of which I lost today, but am desperately trying not to dwell on and instead to see the lesson held within.....mostly that it is possible to get very attached to possessions very quickly and that such attachments can bring as much unhappiness as they do joy. The trick it seems is to hold all things I love in a light, not a tight, grasp and by so doing, perhaps I will always be ready to let them go, as nothing really belongs to me forever anyway....

The beauty of Srah Srang Lake, near the temple sites.

The day after my birthday was a long day of rest, relaxation and lovely food, including to the fabulous Singing Tree, a cafe and community centre that we have taken to our hearts, and which is like a Peace Cafe away from home (except these guys do veggie burgers, and iced coffees that I would do almost anything for), which runs meditation classes, Buddhist films and a shop selling local goods produced by charities, orphanages and NGO's - yes I did some shopping here! We also visited a restaurant called The Butterflies Garden that has lots of butterflies in the garden outside and where you can eat your food on sofas that resemble beds - pure luxury! The money from this place goes to a local NGO and local children collect the butterflies that come to live here.

A Monkey at the Singing Tree Cafe on her birthday - we've been back there many times since and tonight Kate went to a meditation introduction there, while Ang and I sat outside reading and writing, and drinking beer and iced coffee shakes respectively!

It was at the Singing Tree cafe that we had the opportunity to attend a "Monk Chat" session, that does exactly what it says on the tin. We sat and spoke to a monk from one of the local pagodas (where the monks and their students live) for an hour or so about his life as a monk in Cambodia.

This was a real eye-opening experience for me, as I think I was holding some really romantic (in 20/20 hindsight) ideas about Buddhist spirituality and my own sense of and need for a spiritual quest in life.

I've got a face, you've got a face......It's all gonna be alright.....
A face of the Buddha, from the Bayon temple.

Buddhism was only reinstated as the national religion in the 90's and now plays a major role in education and in the rural areas, environmental protection. In Thailand, we saw that young men entered monasteries as a form of national service, but in Cambodia, entering a monastery is a vital practice for young men who are looking to improve their education and life chances. The young monk we spoke to, who has been a monk for 8 years, entered the pagoda as a way of gaining an education.

“Since 2001, I become a monk. Before this I live in a village, I look after water buffalo. There are many trees everywhere, it is far from town or city, maybe you say jungle. I do not know about anything then. I do not know meaning of life or about Buddhism. And perhaps it stay that way, but I am lucky, I ask my grandfather and he speaks to my father and he tells him I want to go to monastery and my father thinks it is a good idea. So I come, because I want to learn languages and I do not want always to work in the fields.”

Apsaras in the Bayon temple

He tells us that some monks stay for a long time as monks, that they live their lives like this and become teachers. For many, many others though, it is something that the young men do to seek a better education and what he calls ‘general knowledge’ about the world, something that he would not otherwise have received in his village at home. He has not seen his family for two years, though he is allowed to visit them once a year and he is starting to think that maybe next year he will leave life as a monk and seek work as a tour guide perhaps, or in the tourist industry.

I start to wonder if many of my ideas about (dare I say, attachments to) Buddhism back home were based on a very false idea of the reality of the practice of the religion in the countries in which it originated. 'My' Buddhism starts to look a little like another of the many luxuries I can afford, something that I can pick and choose to give some meaning to my existence in a world that from here begins to look more and more insane, unjust and unbalanced. This is not to say that there is nothing for me to learn from Buddhism, and it is still one of my most valuable sources of guidance. However, I feel as though my spiritual quest is indeed a luxury compared to the daily life here, where there is simply no time to spend navel gazing and wondering too intently about the meaning of life.

More apsaras from the Bayon temple - I told you I had a lot of photos of them....

I enjoy the evening greatly, even though or perhaps because it leaves me with far more questions than it answers. I have no sense of what Buddhism means to this young man or how it will change his life once he leaves the protection of his monastery to seek work. He certainly has a clear idea of how hard it will be for him at first, and speaks of his worries if he is unable to make money. Spirituality does not clothe us, nor does it feed us, after all. At the end of the session, the two monks chant for us, a prayer for luck and for all that we desire. It is a beautiful and soulful sound, though of course I have no idea what any of it means. Each one takes it in turns to pause for breath, allowing the other to continue the chant as he inhales.

More than any reflection on my own spirituality, which develops on its own path as the trip progresses, in ways I could not predict and rarely wish for, this conversation with the monk cements a fascination and growing love for Cambodia in me. As with Indonesia, there is a gritty resourceful hope at the heart of this country; a nation that has seen so much tragedy that I cannot help but feel that if you scratch the surface of the earth itself here, it will bleed. Yet there is such warmth here, and something far more enigmatic, more elusive, a sense that this country's emotional self is somewhere behind the scenes always, hard to find and harder still to pin down. I like it immensely, and look forward to each day when I wake up.

Richard driving the tuk tuk - I have no idea how this shot came out at all as I can barely begin to describe how bumpy the average tuk tuk ride in Cambodia is!

Many volunteers from all over the world, but particularly the West, come to Cambodia to volunteer in different programmes, some teaching English, but others doing more administrative, management or even hands on environmental or conservation work. Again, you have to do your research when choosing a programme, but we have met many volunteers here with varying degrees of training and involvement with the local programmes, and the sense of contribution and achievement they feel is clear. Tonight we met Bev, a lovely Australian woman who is teaching at a local orphanage.

"I've taught in Australia, but the kids are horrible there. The behaviour is terrible," she tells us, between recounting her many travel adventures with the natural Australian gift for story telling, "But here, there is so much love from the children, they are so affectionate, it's lovely."

Bev has never done any volunteering before and she came here after meeting a volunteer organiser at what she calls a "hippy festival in the bush" that she goes to every year. She tells us she is the sort of person who just does things on whim and her decision to come to Cambodia has been no exception.

We also met Marley at our guest house, a young Australian woman who is in Cambodia after several previous visits volunteering for a project called Harmony Farm, about 70km from Siem Reap, which she has become increasingly involved with over past years. She is currently self-funding as a volunteer but has been awarded funding from the Australian government to continue her work. Harmony Farm is an orphanage, school and growing enterprise as a sustainable eco-farm, teaching children and young people farming skills which will, they hope, in the future allow the project to become self-sustaining. Marley has a background in agriculture, and started as a hands on volunteer and teacher but now does a lot of administrative and managerial work, meeting with NGO's and fund raising.

When you get outside of the town, these rice fields are the most common sight by the sides of the roads. They are bright green and very eye catching and are one of the main ways rural Cambodians make a living, barely.

We visited the night market a few nights ago, which has to be experienced to be believed. Not only are there bargains to die for - I bagged a few and I'm now discarding clothes at a rate of knots to fit in all the things I'm buying - but there are masseurs, pools where fish will eat the dead skin from your feet, stalls where you can have ear candles inserted and a cocktail bar. I wanted to have my feet done by the fish, but after a Singapore Sling, Sex on the Beach and a Harvey Wallbanger (all at a staggering £1.80 each), I wasn't fit to climb into the pool. I was going to do a Long Island Iced Tea, but I don't think I would have made it home. As it was I had to insist on getting a tuk tuk home as I was really quite sozzled - maybe the heat, maybe the lack of food, maybe the fact that we really haven't had the opportunity to drink here much! Oh, well, apart from on my birthday when K and A pulled a bottle of champagne out of the hat - or out of the ice bucket to be precise!!

We spent a third day at the temples, and this one really was my favourite, even taking Angkor Wat into consideration, as on our last day we went to Angkor Thom, the remains of a city of temples and the old Royal Palace. Here we visited Bayon temple, which I loved, and which is famous for all the faces of Buddha carved into the many towers. There is no official agreement on how many faces there are, which I love! I think this is because some of the faces are partial and less clear than others, so no two people count them the same, and there is something about this elusiveness that just about sums up my feelings about Cambodia - nothing is for certain!

More views from the Bayon temple in the fading light.

The other thing I've been buying with ridiculous frequency is books - which is utterly absurd as they are the most difficult thing to carry due to their rigidity and their weight. But I am, at heart, a book fiend, and I cannot stop. I know, talk about attachment. In Cambodia, there is an ubiquitous trade in bootleg or 'pirate' books, which as a librarian and protector of copyright, I should abhor, but in practice, I love. Basically, original books are photocopied and rebound - actually stitched together, bound! - and sold very cheaply and not just by street and temple vendors, but in actual bookshops, too! It's brilliant, and means that you can pick up great 'new' books for about £3, which is cheaper than any country we've been to so far!

I bought a copy of the novelisation of 'The Killing Fields', the film about journalist Sydney Schanberg and his Cambodian friend Dith Pran during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. It makes me cry about every ten minutes, but I know that I will never forget reading this book whilst in Cambodia, and the sense it has given me of what it must have been like to be here in those dreadful days is better than any other resource.

One of the Victims of Landmines Bands, who play outside the larger temples. I bought one of their cds as they play lots of traditional Cambodian folk music, which we are developing a real fondness for, and which sounds like nothing else I've heard before.

Another legacy of Cambodia's troubled past are landmines, of which there are estimated to be 3,000,000 left unexploded across the country, following the three decades of war the nation has experienced. Planted by various factions, including the Khmer Rouge, but supplied by the Soviet Union, USA and China, landmines make much of the countryside a very dangerous place. We visited the Landmine Museum about 30km outside Siem Reap, where Aki Ra, a former Cambodian soldier who planted landmines, now works as part of an NGO he created to clear up and defuse them. He set up the museum to raise money both for the continuing clean up work, and to fund an orphanage and children's home that works to help disabled children, some of whom were themselves harmed by landmines. The museum includes a garden in which defused landmines are placed as they would be in the countryside, to give you an idea of how easy to miss and how dangerous they are. Although some will kill you, many will cause very serious damage to limbs and so many landmine victims are amputees.

Landmines at the Cambodian Landmine Museum run by Aki Ra, a former Cambodian soldier now devoted to clearing landmines and improving the lives of young Cambodians. These landmines are triggered when you step on them and are the reason why so many Cambodians have lost limbs.

Landmines hanging from a tree in the Landmine Museum Garden. These ones are really awful, and will normally be concealed in forests. Trip wires run from them close by, so that when someone walks past and triggers one, they are likely to die instantly.

Death and injury have become so commonplace in Cambodia that many of the local people talk to you about such incidents with chilling casualness. Richard, our tuk tuk driver, invited us to his village on his day off to meet his family, to whom he introduced us with great pride. He mentions two friends of his who died of malaria when he was working as a fisherman in Sihanoukville (a coastal town) in his youth.

"I don't know why I no get," he tells us, mystified, "There were four of us, but two get malaria and die, not me. I come home after, too dangerous there."

Ten people live in the house where Richard grew up, his brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces as well as both his parents. In addition to the main house there is a larger wooden building raised on tall stilts, which stands perhaps on slightly lower ground and can be used in the rainy season, which began in May. It rains heavily for a while almost every day, and you can soon predict from the humidity and sudden change in the wind, as well as the heavy dark clouds, when this will happen. During our visit to the village, however, we are blessed with good weather, which is just as well as Richard sends one of his nephews straight up a palm tree some 50 feet tall to collect coconuts for us. Richard then hacks these open, slips in a straw and hands them straight to us to drink the milk, which is one of the best and unique experiences so far!

Richard's nephews at his village. These children were beautiful, always smiling and full of energy, cycling, running and leaping around or fighting with each other. The only English word they know is 'Hello', which they would repeat to us constantly, and which we, of course, repeated back!

After the village, Richard drops us off at a local restaurant where we get to watch some apsara dancing, yes, as in the apsaras from the temple reliefs! Live and in the flesh, this is just as uniquely, exquisitely beautiful and I am torn between wanting to be one of these elegant dancers and wanting to watch them dance forever. No wonder these dances were thought to be for the gods. As well as the slow, elegant female dances or Apsara dance, which shows an Apsara and her maids collecting flowers (this dance has a heavy Thai influence), we see folk dances. Unlike the Apsara and classical dances, which were performed only by women at the show, all wearing ornate and beautiful clothes decorated in gold - reflecting their importance and the fact that they were originally performed exclusively for royalty - the folk dances are performed in every day dress and feature men and women.

One of these, the Robam Kom Araek, features the dancers leaping over bamboo poles, which are held at either end by other dancers and banged on the floor, while couples or pairs of couples leap over them in time to the beat - the last time I saw this was at Howard's wedding, during a display of Filipino dance and this one is thought to be a Khmer version of the same. My favourite though was the coconut dance or Robam Kous Trolaok, in which the male and female dancers move much faster than in the classical dances, and clap together coconut shells. There is much shouting, chanting and grinning during this one and it looks like a lot of fun.

Tomorrow, we head out to Harmony Farm to see Marley and for a look around and we will be taking schoolbooks and pencils for the school. After that, Richard will take us on to the temples further out from Siem Reap, and we will probably stay in a local village somewhere before heading back on Friday. Then we're off to the country's capital, Phnom Penh!

Finally, a really big thank you for all my emails, phone calls, text messages and facebook messages on my birthday - what an extra special treat to have so many reminders of home on my first birthday ever in another country!! I had a great time here, but to hear from you all really made it the perfect day - so a very big thank you all the way from Cambodia and peace out until next time!!