ok so im going to skip most of ankor wat and what not, its awesome, but theres heaps written about it, and its too much to write about. we saw a massssive spider while wandering around looking for a lazy buddha, and i fed him some big motherfuckerbitemeontheankles tree ants.they were surprisingly good at avoiding the stick that i was holding out for them to climb on. they must have a bigger brain to go with those pincers and knew that i was going to feed them to shelob. the coolest temple in my view was the one that was used to film indianna jones and tomb raider, as it has been left in the same condition that it was discovered in by the french. its gradually being reclaimed by the bush, and there are some huge trees that look like ents tearing apart the walls and buildings in ultraslow motion. wish i had one of those film speed controller jobbies cause it would look spectacular if you could speed it up. only annoyance here was the aircon minibus japanese tour group who strolled through and took turns taking photos of themselves for 5 hours at the base of the biggest stone destroying tree, so i had to wait for them to take a photo of the tree with no humans to ruin the picture.
we parted ways with tom and jerry who we had met up with at the internet cafe right after posting the last post, and got up at 4am to cycle the 105 dirt road kilometres on the first leg to batambang, the second biggest town in cambodia. the road was in bad shape because its the road to the border with thailand, and an unnamed airline has bribed an unnamed government not to upgrade it so that more tourists would fly. was good though, because the bikes ate it, and there are no other dirt roads left here (dirt roads being the main motivation for bringing heavyass mountain bikes). we had a good laugh when we stopped for lunch and i gave some local kids some cheese (they have real cheese in siem reap!!!) they have never had cheese before and didnt know what the fuck it was. they didnt like it though. haha. just before we got into town the heavens opened, and the dust turned to mud in 1 minute. even better to have MTBs but our tyres still got clogged, and it was all i could do to thrash my bike around to clear the mud and keep riding. lissa didnt fare so well, and walked her bike into town swearing like a sailor. i kept out of her way and we found a nice aircon hotel for her to lie down in while i cleaned the horses. next day was a sweet 65 km hop to batambang, which is not as good as the lonley planet (lonley liar as its dubbed by most people after a month of using it)made it out to be. we managed to find a good place to get a fruitshake and a fish amok, and ran into our cartoon animal friends again. did a tour with them the next day out to some caves where the KR killed about 10,000 people by cutting their throats and pushing them through the roof. then went to the bamboo railway, a really cool contraption built by the locals cause theres only one train every 3 days, so they took some old wagon wheels, built a platform of bamboo, strap an engine on and you have a good ehough train to transport stuff 10 km down the track to the next village. the whole thing is dismantled when the real train comes through. cool.
next day our friends left, so we hired motorbikes and drivers who took us around the local villages explaining how they make stuff. went to a fruit growing place, the guide tells us this is mango tree, this is green oranges, this is happy grass, this is jackfruit. wait a minute, back up. what? most of the locals are allowed to grow one or two weed plants to make happy soup with.
we decided to leave the next day after eating a couple of dinners at an awesome riverside restaurant that angelina jolie apparently goes to. glad for the fuel cause it was slim pickings from then on. next town 40 km on was called Krakor. immediately thought of anna (nz) for obvious reasons. its a shit town but has a floating village nearby out on the lake that we did a tour of by boat. they have everything out there, boats with pigs and chickens roosting on them, cellphonecard shops, floating petrol stations and all that. no bars though, theres a niche. it would have been an awesome place to sit up and have a beer. there was even a boat full of crocodiles. our guide didnt speak the english though so not sure if they was food, or had just been pulled out of the lake so they wouldnt eat the children who swam around naked in the green water.
in the next town we ate dinner at one of the only restraunts (recommended by LP) where i got a bony leg of a dead bird and some chips, and spent the next 3 days payng the hefty price for this horrorable food. i got awfully familiar with our floor tiles. with nothing to eat in this hole of a town i bit the bullet, took a buttplugdrug and we cycled 92 km to phnom penh. it was bad but thankfully i dont remember most of it. in PP we found a chemist that sells salt and vinegar chips!!!!!!! they also gave real grape juice!!!!! and of course cheeseburgers, and even a kiwi bakery where we bought a pie and a sausage roll!!!! i think they got the wrong idea when they were in NZ though cause they had silver table service, the staff loitered nervously in their waistcoats and ties(????) as we awkwardly ate our pies and TF with knives and forks, and there was no music. a very strange dining experience.
our guesthouse here is on the lake (a massive pond full of plants) and has a free pootable that has seen a lot of me, and a bar on the water that is an awesome spot to watch the daily lightening storms. its a pretty confortable pad so we havent seen as much of the city as we should have, but we headed out yesterday to check out the scenes of the recent holocaust which is now a major tourist attraction (people really are sick). im wondering what the dudes who were killed would have thought of having a rifle range for rich tourists (where you can fire grenades, ak47's, rocketlaunchers, all kinds of shit) almost within sight of their mass graves. got back and some guy asked us where we went today. "killing fields" "oh ok, did you have a good time?" "yeah i fukin loved it, havent had a better day out in years." they dont really understand sarcasim but what the hell. didnt your father or aunt or cousin die here? doesnt it feel strange selling this to me? there are signs on the big temple full of skulls saying respect our dead, remvoe your shoes, and yet near one of the recently exhumed pits there is another pit full of garbage. how about YOU guys respect YOUR dead, and dont fill their mass fucking grave with the filthy product of your own consumersit fucking existance. whats the point though? they have little concept of recycling, and they usually try to give you 3 plastic bags for every piece of fruit or bottle of water that you buy. its not going to change either, hun sen (the primeminister (read dictator/vietnamese puppet)) is now 50 something and says he will not retire until he is 90. the corruption here runs pretty deep (actually right to the bottom, that being the deepest of the deep), and until hun sen is gone, i cant see anything getting much better for either the people or the environment. we met a tuk tuk driver today who said he was being paid 28 dollars a month as a university lecturer. an old american tourist gave him 2000 dollars to buy a tuk tuk, and he can make 25 dollars a day on a good day in the peak season driving tourists around the killing fields. incredible.
aux
Full points to anyone who knows what Misanthropic means...aux explained it to me, not sure if we spelt it correctly. okilidokily
Lissa
