My trip was really great. We had good
karma running with us all the time (well almost all, I had some bad
yoghurt which didn’t help the tummy for 1 night, but recovered
fast). We flew via Singapore and had a very long stop over,
fortunately I have a friend who now lives there so we stayed the
night at her place before heading to Phnom Penh for the night. From
there we went directly to Siem Reap by bus to begin Temple viewing.
We stayed in a great hotel called the Golden Banana in there
boutique hotel bit which is 7 really nice apartments all around a
pool! The pool was very important as it was very hot (about 38
degrees). Temples were just amazing and we spent an extra day there
to do the outlying ones which was well worth the time (and one
pulled calf muscle by me!).

From Siem Reap we took a river boat trip
up to Battambang. Our luck was really going well as the rains we
had over the previous days mean the boat could go all the way up
river. Its was an incredible boat trip and gave an amazing insight
into river life. It can be also upsetting as some of these people
live in deep poverty with houses constructed of sticks and plastic
bags. Out luck was really giong well as the Villa we wanted to stay
at had a spare room for us. Its a restored 1930 french villa and
was amazing. (no pool, but we got soaking wet anyway as the monsoon
rain hit and we had no umbrellas). We had booked into a cooking
course to learn Kymer food. Was really fun, going around the market
and cooking up. The have an ingredient call Prahok, which smells
like fermented rotten fish, which is an accurate smell since it is
fermented rotten fish! I didn’t put much into my soup but I do
have to admit once its cooked for a while it tastes great!

We also did a motor bike tour around of
the home industries making things rice paper, and mushrooms. And
took a trip on the famous Bamboo Railway. Our luck was in again as
we got onto the bus to head back to Phnom Penh just as the skies
opened up again. We had a great time there as well nosing around
different thing and just slowing down to relax as we had been up
very very early (like 5am) when going out to view temples. And then
it was over and time to head home, we did well again thou as the
serviced apartment we stayed in were happy for us to stay until
3pm, so we shopped, then lounged by pool, showered and were driven
out to the airport! Flight back was okay, duty free in Changi took
a hinding as we got bored at the fragrence counter!