Lee n Tan

We made our pickup time 8.30am today but we still didn’t make it! We took off at 9am to a waterfall area called ‘Kbal Spean’ about 40km out of town. The carvings in the river bed date back to possibly the 11th to 12th century. Our trusty driver did not inform us of the 3km round trip to get to the carvings most of it was in the shade, but quite steep in parts. My foot held up quite well.

From here we back tracked to Banteay Srei or Citadel of the Women or as the locals call it the lady temple. That was beautiful and well worth the drive!! The carvings were exquisite and the temple was made from pink sandstone, very different to any other. Probably my favourite!! We had lunch at one of the stalls near this temple and we talked to a guy that sold knock off books (the sellers are everywhere around the temples). He sells the books for $1US, he has to pay the police $40US per month so they do not confiscate his books, he probably only sells 2-3 books a day if he is lucky and at the end of all this he still has to buy the books from somewhere and make a living. Very interesting conversation!!!

From this beautiful temple we made our way to the landmine museum – check out http://www.cambodialandminemuseum.org/ Aki Ra who was a former child soldier of the Khmer Rouge set up the landmine museum with the mines he has decommissioned throughout Cambodia since 1995. We watched a DVD of his story and it was very humbling. He goes out finding these mines with a stick in his hand just prodding the ground!!!! OMG!!

What we planned to be an easy day ended up being completely the opposite, by the time we got back it was around 4pm and we were buggered!

In the evening we took some other travellers – Philip & Cal out to the Night Market and dinner at the street stall. Not as good as the other night so a bit of a disappointment. We all went back to Rosy’s and played a couple of games of shit head, Mark & Maria (Irish Couple) joined us. Then we hit the hay ready for another day of temples.