It can be hard to enjoy your chocolate pancake when there are kids wandering around at 9pm selling photocopied books or just begging alongside the amputee beggars who have been injured by landmines. Yet you still do and are helping the staff of the cafes keep their jobs. The economy relies a lot on the tourist industry. Yet there is something so wrong in the world when people are sleeping on the streets and not having enough to eat.

Landmines are still a major problem in Cambodia, even this many years after the war is over. About 1000 people a year are killed or maimed by landmines. Victims are a common enough sight on the streets of Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, many reduced to begging in a country where there is no such thing as social security. The dilemmas of giving to beggars and not being able to give to everyone. And the kids question. It is nice to buy the pineapple from the cute girl at the stalls, but is that encouraging child labour, or just providing income to a family?


We passed through increasingly green fields under an increasingly grey sky. The rain laden clouds built up but only ripped open after we were safely in the cafe of our new Sihanoukville guesthouse. It is interesting to see a country from the windows of a bus. The wooden stilt houses and newer brick houses on cement stilts; food stalls; children finishing school and being collected by parents on many varied motorbikes; motorbikes with a double load of pig strapped on the back seats, belly up and definitely dead; flat plains and the start of some low hills that seem large in comparison to the extensive flatness of the country. It is better travelling by land than air.


"Travel is an art, and one must practice it in a relaxed way, with passion, with love. I realised that after years of going about in aeroplanes I had unlearned that art - the only one I care about"
Terzio Terzani in 'A Fortune Teller Told Me'

The four boys sat on the corner of the weather blackened stone of an out building at Angkor Wat. Two of them wore the bright orange robes of novice monks and their shaved heads reflected the warmth of the sinking sun. They were all laughing at their friend chopping away furiously up the coconut tree. Professionals; all smiled straight at the camera for their photo opportunity and it was a classic.

Digital photography has the advantage of being able to delete images as you choose, so you can shoot freely without developing costs. To my sickened stomach, it also means you can accidentally in an unfocussed second wipe a couple hundred photos! Yes - it happened to me yesterday. I went back around the main sites in the inner loop at the Angkor complex to re-take some images, but the sun was now high and the light flat; and the wee boys were no longer waiting for me!

Angkor Wat is a truly impressive complex. Man's skill and creativity; desire for power and prestige; worship and wonder. A great accomplishment, and yet my favourite is Ta Prohm, where the forest is reclaiming its place over the man made buildings. Tall trees bind their thick roots around the roofs and walls and broken stones. Even in destruction nature is beautiful. Maybe the building was the destruction and the forest is restoring some natural balance and beauty?

We passed through the flat expanses of the Cambodian countryside with an electric storm illuminating the sky for miles around us. Sheet lightning flashing out both sides of the bus and fantastic classic fork lightning ripping the sky in its brilliant race to the ground. So bright it burnt its imprint on my retina for several minutes after it had exploded. We passed through a little rain which bounced through the closed windows, but for the most part it streamed down in a dark fog on the horizon.

People are not exaggerating when they say the trip from Poipet on the Thai border, to Siem Reap is one of the worst roads in the world. Our driver was good and our only incident having to bypass a collapsed bridge which still held the articulated lorry that had crushed it. We did wonder how the bus stayed together though. My dad does not know how its axle is not dead. It was impossible to hear the voice of the person sitting beside you, the rattling was so loud. It even drowned out the thunder when the lightning was right on top of us. We arrived by 9pm after just over 5 hours of shaking from the border. Meeting some people from our Bangkok bus leg of the journey today, we found out that the bus they had been transferred to arrived at 1.30am!!!!, after two breakdowns! I guess we got lucky.

After watching a cloudy sunset from Angkor Wat, complete with orange robed monks dotted photogenically by the weathered stone columns, we made it back to our guesthouse on our bicycles before tonight's storm hit. Its 15 minute glory was bright and loud and very wet, and cooled us down deliciously!!

I breathed in a hot breeze, even on the motorbike. The air was viscous and I rode through pools of hotter air, like currents in a body of water. The atmosphere felt heavy; wading through a molasses dream. My own 'Famished Road' merging of heat induced dreams in daylight. 38 degrees in the shade and sitting at a red light on the black sun beat tarmac I felt myself turning to glue.

Cool water bottle from the fridge to the temples and ankles. I sat rehydrating in the still shade and watched the slowly moving people walk around the market. The covered walkways between the many shops made perusing the wooden goods bearable. I even purchased myself a set of chopsticks.

Cloud cover comes as a welcome relief, below the relentless sun. Sodden clouds bearing a false witness to cooling rain bring a brief respite. Life through my tinted lenses appears a fraction more animated.