A long planned meeting

This pic shows Margaret, Irene's sister, and Sid, her husband, with us outside - yes, where else but - Little Creatures after a few bevvies.
Thanks to Skype we had been planning this get-together for several months.
We had a great few hours with them, and we learned a lot about their experiences relocating to this part of the world.
Temperature here is daily around 30 degrees. Just comfortable. Glad not to be in Melbourne where it's going to be 42 degrees today. The heat is buckling the railway lines there, and has had a disasterous effect on the Australian Open, where some good players have simply wilted in those conditions.

Drinking beer in Australia

We're in Australia now, in Fremantle.

Strangely, we've trouble getting on-line over (never a problem in Thailand or Cambodia!). Western Australia is renowned for its wines, but we have a soft spot for a microbrewery here called Little Creatures. It's not so micro any more. Not surprising, since the pale ale here is one of the best pints we drunk anywhere.
Pizzas are pretty damn good too

Paper umbrella factory

We came across this umbrella factory in the village of Bor Sang, a few miles outside Chiang Mai. Sadly, our grasp of the Thai language prevented us from asking the workers what their mission statement was.

Hill tribe woman

The jungles of northern Thailand house several hill tribes. Most have, at some time, fled from Burma or Tibet. This woman is from the Karen tribe. She weaves cloth to earn some living from passing trekkers.
You might be able to make out that her teeth are black. This is the result of chewing on betel leaves. We were told that it cleans the teeth - but it is also a stimulant.

Jungle trekking

Jungle trekking is one of the reasons why tourists come to Chiang Mai. We did some trekking-lite yesterday. The pic shows a branch of Costa Coffee by the banks of the Mae Ping river

An elephant ride!

In the jungle, an hour's drive outside Chiang Mai, there are several camps which care for elephants. We were lucky enough to ride on top of one. Not the smoothest of rides, and the "vehicle" would stop if not fed large amounts of banana and bamboo. But it was a fabulous experience

One last temple

This is the Temple in the Jungle. It is one of the most popular of the Angkor temples because it shows how the jungle strangles abandoned buildings. It has intentionally been left un-restored and looks as it would have done when the French rediscovered Angkor in the 19th century.

It featured in the film Tomb Raider.

Returning to Thailand: various styles of transport

These three video clips were taken as we left Cambodia to return to Thailand.

We traveled by: ancient stretch Mercedes (decadent); by tuk tuk (a scary experience in Bangkok traffic); and by overnight train (very comfortable, even in 2nd class).

In the last clip you might just make out that Mike managed to video the train attendant videoing him. The attendant then offered to show Mike some video on his mobile. Thinking it might be family snaps, Mike was happy to watch. . It turned out to be pornographic clips, badly shot. Maybe they were family shots after all.....

The train tickets cost us all of £24 for a 14 hour journey. The seats turned down into couchettes at night. We got clean bedding - and had the most comfortable sleep of our holiday so far.

A history lesson

This is Sna, our guide for the past four days here in Cambodia. The picture shows him holding a banana flower at a roadside breakfast stall.

Sna's story is worth telling. He was born in 1971. Four years later, the Khmer Rouge army took control of Cambodia, installing Pol Pot as dictator. Pol Pot immediately forced all citizens living in towns to flee to the countryside. Sna's family quit Siem Reap with almost no possessions. They roamed from village to village until eventually Sna and his parents were all separated. He was placed in a children's compound, where he was forced to make fertiliser for the rice fields.
The regime was eventaully defeated by the Vietnamese army. He was reunited with his mother, but never again saw his father. Pol Pot's programme of genocide had killed 25% of the population in just four years,

Even under the Vietnamese, who controlled the country until the end of the 80's, there were challenges. It was illegal to learn European languages. Sna learned English from an old neighbour. Had either of them been caught, the punishment would have been severe.

Sna now speaks excellent English, and his work as a guide provides well for him and his young family. Thanks to him, our visit to this lovely, troubled country has exceeded expectations.

Next stop: Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. Travelling there by overnight train. The adventure continues!

Our favourite temple

This video clip shows a small temple called Banteay Srei, also known as the Citadel of the Women. We think this is the best of all the temples we visited. The carvings are intricate and the site very spiritual, maybe because we arrived early and had it to ourselves.

Distributing paper and pens

On our journey this morning, between two temples, we stopped at a small village to hand out paper and pens to some children. Sna, our guide, gave out small bananas too (called chicken egg bananas because of their size).

It was humbling to see how excited the children and their mothers could be by such a modest token. Poverty is a huge issue here. There are orphanages everywhere, not because parents have died but because they have abandoned their children. Many foreign agencies are setting up schools here, but youngsters are still slipping through the education net.

Angkor Wat, sunrise

Angkor Wat is the most famous of the many temples located outside Siem Reap. It was built by a Hindu King of Cambodia in the 12th century, but later became a Buddhist temple.

We left our hotel at 5.30 this morning to see it as the sun rose, Few other tourists had our dedication!

Buddhist monk

This monk was photographed at the Bayon temple, near Angkor Wat. The temple is renowned for having originally had 54 towers. Today only 37 remain standing. Each has four enormous carvings of the head of the Buddha. It is claimed that no two images of the Buddha are the same.

Cambodian musicians

While visiting Bakong, one of the ruined temples near Angkor Wat, we came across this group of musicians. They were playing traditional instruments, including a two-stringed violin and a large stringed instrument called a khim.

We learned that all the musicians were victims of land mine explosions, losing limbs or their eye- sight. Cambodia suffered a dark history during and immediately after the despised Pol Pot regime (1975-1979), when his Khmer Rouge troops planted many thousand land mines. Even today the countryside has not been entirely cleared of them

Cambodia, visiting the temples

Angkor Wat, the famous Buddhist temple in Cambodia, is only one of several thousand shrines in the jungle outside Siem Reap. We are visiting several of them over four days. This one is called Takeo. It was built 100 years or so (about 1000AD) before Angkor Wat, and before the Cambodian (Khmer) kings converted to Buddhism, making it a Hindu temple.

Takeo has none of the ornate carvings found on many other temples, meaning that it is not much visited. However the design is attractive and it is well preserved.

We left our hotel at 6.30 this morning to see it and so had it to ourselves.

Bangkok Rush Hour

Our first day in Bangkok, we strolled about the city during rush hour. The streets were jammed, as expected, but we caught some commuters traveling to work by ferry boat on the Khlong Saem Saeb river.

Some of them manage to spare a few minutes in devotion at a small Buddhist compound, the Erawan Shrine. They perform their rituals with deliberate care, then move off to join the early morning traffic.

It is the location of the shrine that surprises, for it is located close to the Siam Square complex of shopping malls, sandwiched between the Burberry and Louis Vuitton stores.