The rain turned me off going to see temples so after a lazy breakfast at about midday we decided to go for a bike ride to some free temples(the others are $20) So after riding about 2km we saw one temple and then this guy wanted to show us around an Aids orphanage, where they teach kids etc. He was showing us around and there was no one there, I said “where are the kids’ and he said they were away for two weeks, I was thinking to myself where would kids in an orphanage go? So he showed us around some more and then asked for a donation to the school, I offered to volunteer for a day instead he said no and wanted the cash. This is when I thought of a huge problem facing all these countries and charities. They do not know how to communicate with westerners, he gave me a pretty lame piece of paper saying we would love your help. They need a better way almost like a template saying what they do, and different ways you can help. Stealing from a few different ideas already out there, it would be good if you could buy dinner for a week, or perhaps volunteer directly with the community not through a third party, organize a charity thing at home and send the money, see some photos of your money doing work. This would not be that much more effort and I think they would make 10times the amount of money. If I hold a trivia night raising money that would be 100 times more than the $5 I might give.
After this temple we decided to cycle to another temple (12kms) the Bakong (this was the first Angkorian one we saw) and it looked amazing, but we couldn’t get in as you needed a ticket L. We decided to cycle back a different way through a farming community along a dirt road, all the locals were staring thinking we were going the wrong way, then we came upon a volleyball match so I had a go. We were there for about an hour playing volleyball (they love it over here), then I convinced them to play a little soccer. This was in a rice field where it was muddy and there was about 1 foot holes all over the place, it was great. Had an awesome time, and really made my day J Sport really is an international language, we couldn’t understand each other but knew what to do.
How good is this action shot! I was saying hello in Australian 
That night met up with Ed and Fi for dinner, then went out for a night at Angkor WHAT??
Well another early start as I had to get to the boat for the trip to Siem Reap by 7. Didn’t get a chance to grab any breaky but picked up a baguette (they are crazy for them over here, they are everywhere all over
Vietnam and
Cambodia). The boat trip was cool, it went from about 7-2:30 through a few rivers and then across a lake to just outside Siem Reap. It was really cool seeing how all the people in the country are living, absolutely crazy they live about 1 foot above the water in a little house on stilts, or on a floating house boat. There are whole towns around and in the river on the way. One school I passed was in the middle of the water, so there was no way to get out apart from boat or swim. 
When arriving to Siem Reap you go through a floating village which is pretty cool, every place is a house boat or house on pontoon type structure. Really amazing how much stuff they fit on them, I even saw a floating basketball court. On the boat I met an English couple Ed and Fiona, really great people and they are traveling around the world overland, even a few stints on cargo ships. Should check it out www.lowcarbontravel.com, they are coming to
Australia for about a month if you want to show them around or hang out they will be in Manly of all places. 
‘When you should just say NO’On arrival to Siem Reap or actually 18kms away there is always the problem of getting to the hotel. There was this guy who said I will take you to any hotel for $1. Too easy, then he said I usually make up the difference by taking people around the temples the next day, which you normally do so we thought too easy. I didn’t really want to get a tuk tuk to the temples I was going to ride so when he dropped us off we said we would wait to see what Ed and Fiona were doing, could you please come back at 7:30pm (this was the first time he would have to return) At 7:30 feeling bad we thought we would do a sunrise viewing of Angkor Wat and told him to meet us at 5am. Went to dinner with Ed and Fiona, then went home and it was raining. Woke at 5am raining even harder and thought we should brush it, so I went out to him(second time), he was all kitted out in his wet weather gear looking excited, I gave him the bad news that Frida was on her deathbed, terrible lyer kept adding to the story. Then he said what about tomorrow. I gave him $3 and couldn’t say no, so told him to come back at 10 and see how she is feeling. 10am went out and had to say no, felt really bad and should have just shut him down first thing.
Well after buying the 7:15 bus ticket to
Phnom Penh, had to get up early. We arrived at the bus by about 7, then onto the bus after getting some crappy bus food snacks. We eventually left about 7:45and the trip was pretty painless. When we arrived in PP at about11:30 we bought a ticket to Battambang at 12:30. I decided it was time for a shave, so went to find a barber. It was so different after the shave almost wish I didn’t do it.
The bus to Battambang was painful it seemed to take forever which was quite frustrating. In the end I think it was about 6-7 hours when they said it would be about 4. Now I am very cynical about start, finish and overall trip times. We decided to do a Cambodian and Thai cooking course at ‘Smoking Pot’ which was running the next morning, so we booked that, and had a little look around town.
The next day it was cooking time, it was a great course starting at 9:30am. First of all we went around the market and bought all the ingredients which was good, saw a lot of stuff you never get to see, they had a bag of frogs, alive and proceeded to de-glove them one by one, quite off putting.
We ended up cooking a curry, a stir fry and a soup making everything from scratch. So now I can make curry paste from scratch, and make coconut milk from scratch. The food was good but it is amazing how different it can taste between three or four people. The rest of the day we walked around town and booked a boat ticket to take us to Siem Reap the next day.
When we got up on Tuesday we were feeling a little worse for wear so a day on the beach doing nothing was in store. I had a swim then some breakfast which was great! After this Frida and I went up the beach and found a place with some deck chairs and fell asleep, it couldn’t get any easier.
Later that night we met up with Rob (a Scottish guy we met on the bus and stayed in the next room) for a few drinks and dinner. We ended up getting a few cocktails, dinner then double Vodka Rebulls in between practicing our fire twirling. It was a great night and now I can twirl balls of fire on chains J
Wednesday 1st August
Frida and I decided to rent a motor bike and head towards another beach somewhere along the coast. We managed to get one for $5 and then took off. First we went through town and were going to head to a town called Kampot which was 105km from the middle of Sihanoukville. Frida rode there and I rode back, and we only had a pretty average map to get there, it was a lonely planet map that didn’t really have much or any detail. 
The riding was great, it is a really good way to see the country side even though we were on the highway. It got a little hellish when buses and trucks would go by really quickly right next to you, but was well worth it. About 50km from town we took a right and went through real farming country, rice paddies as far as the eye could see. I wanted to check out this place called Borkor Hill station, which was a station that the French built and it is right on top of a huge hill over looking the coast. We made it to the entrance of the national park and decided to get something to eat. There was a family selling food so we went over and sat down.
You could tell they didn’t get many visitors and they all wanted to talk to us. There was another family there as well who were friends/relatives and they all wanted to talk as well. I got chatting to this cool little guy who knew a lot of English but could not really pronounce, and it looked as though he had muscular dystrophy or something. After talking to his family it turned out he was in a motor bike accident and hit his head really badly, he was a real character though.
When we asked for the food they said what would you like, then it was what do you have. Frida went to have a look and it was squid or chicken, we said chicken until they were about to kill a chicken, then it was quickly squid. Talk about out of site out of mind. We had Squid Fried Rice and talked to this girl who had taught herself English from a book, she was really good at all the pronunciation, and she was relishing this moment to practice. I decided to practice on here, so I learnt numbers, 1,2,3 1st 2nd 3rd etc. By the end I was able to say “I have four brothers, 1st brother is Ben, he is 29” all the way down to Greg. It would be easy to learn if you could bug them all day about how things sound, and then practice.
We noticed it was about 5pm and we were three hours from home, riding in the dark is not much fun with all the bugs. While we were riding next the the rice fields, the bugs were crazy, my head was like a windscreen and I had to put sunnies on so that I could keep my eyes open. We eventually arrived home, pretty tired!
The next day we were not feeling very well (maybe eating squid that has been sitting outside all day is not the best idea) so we had another lazy day.
