March 20

March 20th 2002

Crawled down for breakies. Jonathan orders a glass of cold milk, his little face was a picture when he tasted it! Hot milk with some ice to cool it back down, priceless, we all laughed so much. Wi tells us that it was 47C yesterday - no wonder we felt so hot! We set off to visit some more temples {or Wats as they are called here} before the Sun gets too hot.

Sra Srang is the first Wat - a very small pretty temple built on the side of a lake, man made as a swimming pool. The scenery here is very beautiful. Andrew bought me a purple sunhat which turns into a fan.

Our 2nd Wat - Pre Rup is larger and again absolutely gorgeous. This temple is high with a large platform area on top with lovely views all around {and Amir says good signal for mobile phones}

The 3rd Wat of the day is East Mebon which is guarded by elephants 4 at each corner of each quarter of the temple. This is one of the larger temples and again wonderful scenery. The old stones here have numbers on some of them - architects are trying to rebuild some of the temples, must be the largest jigsaw puzzle in the world.

Our 4th Wat is Ta Pronm a much smaller temple with a tree growing straight out of the top, which is a Buddha's head.

At this juncture my stomach cramps return with a vengeance. Poor Po Lee drives me 15 minutes down the road to a loo, which he then has to pay for so I can use it - what embarrassment! We return and he talks the guard into letting me rejoin our group who are at Neak Pean.

Neak Pean is our last temple of this outing - a small graceful temple with a central square lake with 4 smaller square lakes on each side. We headed back to the hotel. On our way back we saw a pig on the back of a motor bike on a sort of hammock, it was strapped on flat on it's back with it's little legs waving.

We have lunch and discovered that we had swapped rooms for a quiet one at the back of hotel, this one has a built in wardrobe and TV and fridge, but the shower doesn't work, they had moved us while we were out having just redecorated it! We open the windows and french doors to let the smell of paint out. Went out and stopped off at a local souvenier shop and art shop as Peter needed an ice cream, which most of us agreed was an excellent idea. Visited more temples {need to check vid. for info.!!!!!!!!} Andrew bought me a pair of lovely elephant trousers.

Our last temple today is Phnom Bakheng which we climb to watch the sunset. The hill up to the temple is incredibly steep, or you can have a 20 minute elephant ride to the top instead. We all opted for the elephants {me after persuasion from Jonathan and Pete as I have ridden elephants bare back, but really didn't fancy sitting in a basket.} It was brilliant! After the first few minutes I relaxed enough to retrieve the vid. and took some wonderful film of Angkor Wat which was spread out below us, and the surrounding scenery. Took photo of "our elephant" he's really cute with black fuzz on his head. The whole temple area is packed with people intent on watching the sunset too. There is a large group of children here on a camping ceremony who line the walls at the top and are singing as they watch, you can detect who they are as they are all wearing turquoise T shirts. The atmosphere is wonderfully warm and happy and the sunset is lovely too. I didn't climb to the top as the steps were too steep around 10" deep and only half my foot wide. A mega steep run and slide back down hill followed, with Andrew and Fin both looking out for me. Back to hotel for shower and change then out to "Dead Fish" {did you know that Phuket means dead fish?} for dinner - which was good. The Red Piano for cocktails later was even better. Early to bed as tomorrow we finally go to see Angkor Wat!