March 23

March 23rd 2002

Woke up 10 am this morning and went out for a wander around the local market. We bought a lovely pair of turquoise earrings for me, and a Cambodian land mines T shirt for Simon. Had lunch at Dead Fish � not too successful at ordering, but we got there eventually, and had steamed bananas in coconut milk for pudding.

Back to the hotel for a siesta, saw Pete and Jonathan there so had a chat for a while, they have booked a night in an hotel with a swimming pool etc. for some pampering on our last night here. We hire a Put put {equivalent to a Tuk tuk in Bangkok } about 3pm and our driver takes us on a sightseeing tour of Siem Reap. We tootle about at 30mph for an hour or so seeing the places that we haven�t been to as we�ve spent all our time at the temples. He took us across the river, much quieter, it�s an excellent way to check out the area. You just call to the driver if you want to stop somewhere and he will sit and wait for you. There is something very tranquil about going at this speed out in the fresh air with a lovely breeze to keep you cool, we really enjoyed it. He dropped us off at the Red Piano for a fruit shake and a crepe suzette. Glenn and Amir were already here so we chatted.

Decided that we would all like to see some traditional Cambodian dancers tonight so we will put this to Wi. Walked around market again in case we�d missed anything, then back to hotel to see Wi. Amir and Glenn had found her first and all was arranged. Wi had booked 5 bikers {this is a usual mode of transport here} to take us to the Bayon restaurant, it does a buffet meal and the dancers are on stage for about an hour. The meal was certainly different, lots of frog dishes {whole frogs} plenty of hot green curry, fried spaghetti etc. so I filled up on fresh fruit. The dancers were good, so graceful and elegant we really enjoyed watching them. Our bikers returned to fetch us Rasheen insisting that I got on his bike again {nice to be wanted}, and dropped us back at Angkor What? Where else for our last evening of cocktails and shooters? A quieter evening here than usual but really enjoyable. We said farewell to the lovely Auzzie barman � a cool dude.