So things got a bit worse before they got better. We decided to go out in the afternoon as Matt didn't feel so bad and hadn't thrown up for hours. We got downstairs and he said he needed to go back up again as he thought he needed to throw up so as i turned around to walk back up I heard a sound and turned back to see Matt almost on the ground with two of the staff holding him up. He had fainted and he looked awful, I freaked out but he came around soon enough. But that was it, we knew he needed to go to the doctors/hospital.
From all the throwing up etc, Matt had severe dehydration but the clinic looked after him well and got him rehydrated and gave him anti-biotics for the bacteria that had caused the sickness. Needless to say he had a couple of recovery days before we hit the temples.
We got back on track though eventually and spent two days exploring the temples. The first day we took a tuk tuk to the further out temples. The next day we hired push bikes and explored the ones closer to town but did about a thirty km round trip as well as walking around the temples. So by the end of this day we were buggered. I will go in depth further about the temples and wats when I have more time. But we did have a great time.
We left Siem Reap after the days of the temples as we had to get moving. We got a bus to Battembang north west of Siem Reap. We got in about mid afternoon and didn't get up to much. We did get organised a day of exploring the next day. We got two local moto riders to take us around.
We had a brilliant day the next day. We started our trip at around 8:30 so it was nice and cool. We didn't take any major roads so our trip was all through small local villages. It was great to see areas away from the city. We saw lots of small farms, rice paddies, went to a rice winery and saw drunk pigs!
We drove for a long time and all the while, my driver was telling me about the local areas and parts of his story. The first place we really stopped for some time was to go to a hill top to see the Khmer Rouge killing caves and the temples around them. My driver walked up this massive inclining hill with us. Along the way he stopped to tell us about the Khmer Rouge times through his eyes. He had been a boy at the beginning of these times.
When we reached the top he showed us the caves and told us more. His story was heartbreaking but good to hear about this, rather than reading it from a book.
We had an early lunch after spending an hour or so with my driver on the hill top. Next they took us to a wat that once again sat on the top of a hill. This one had stairs, hundreds and hundreds of them. We certainly were getting a work out.
The highlight of the day was taking a bamboo train. This is a vehicle that travels along the regular rail line that they assemble in around a minute. They certainly cruise along! If you see another bamboo train coming towards you, the vehicle with the least amount of weight has to disassemble to let the other pass. And as Matt's driver said if you see a real train you bail.
All in all, we had a great day and enjoyed the company of our drivers.
