Travelling back to Phnom Penh on last day of tour

Woke with a sore head at 3am and then 5am and then finally at 7am just before the alarm. No power meant no coffee, no aircon and no fan in the room, but thankfully I had cooled down quite a bit after my heat collapse last night.

The Cambodian Crouch

Eric arrived in a large air conditioned car at 8am and we set off shortly after. Sitting in the back of a car is never a great experience for me and so I tried to sleep through it which would have worked had the driver not spent the majority of the 4 hour journey leaning on his horn. Thankfully we stopped a couple of times to break it up. The first was at a Buddha factory (more like a roadside village where most people made Buddha's in their front gardens). It was stupidly hot again and I managed to walk around a few of the "factories" before giving up and getting back in the car. I think I have seen enough Buddha statues to last me a lifetime now.

The second stop was mainly for lunch, but it was a place where the locals hold a small market selling all kinds of weird and wonderful fried creatures that I had to have explained to me by a 13 year old girl called Soraya. Her English is fantastic and she said she goes to school every day and then comes after school to the market to sell fruit to make money for her family. She took me round and told me what all the goods were including whole deep-fried quails and their eggs, tarantulas (live ones in buckets and also deep-fried in chilli), there were fruits of all kinds and sweets made of rice, sugar and chilli. Dried bananas, frogs and crickets, enormous cockroaches in garlic and sugar as well as sticky rice bundles and elaborately cut mangos on sticks. I tried a palm fruit that I watched a lady cut out with a machete, and eventually bought Soraya's miniature bananas as a thank-you for her interesting mini-tour.

Mum and I decided we had had enough at this point. The heat was incredible. So we suggested to Eric that we go straight to the hotel when we got to Phnom Penh rather than visit the Cham Muslim community as planned. Eric also had to make the return journey back to Siem Reap ready for a 430am start tomorrow with new clients. So we found the Plantation Spa hotel and sat poolside for a last beer with him before he headed off and we went to do a bit of shopping at the Russian market in town. Sad to be over, but in a way glad to be over too, because now we can enjoy a full day tomorrow to rest before returning home to the cold and the frost on Saturday. And what a place to rest - the hotel is incredible with poolside bar, poolside beds complete with standing fans and a friendly "Bar Captain" called Soran. But why wait til tomorrow....? it seemed a shame not to sample one of her cocktails as soon as possible - our first of the trip.

Countryside to Clinic

Our adventure and what turned out to be the best day of the trip started with breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, bread and ham.
Tuk-tuk at 820am to a rural village market where we saw an old woman eat a raw fly-covered fish head!
We still had some gifts leftover from our visit to Arafin's village, so we used to bribe a few of the market traders for photos which they quite enjoyed. I gave a disposable razor to one guy which I had taken from a hotel room somewhere, and immediately the old fish-eater was back and tugging my sleeve. I turned as she whipped off the krama on her head and ran her hand over her grade 1 then promptly stuck her hand out for a razor too, smiling at me with her one remaining tooth! It seems quite common here for old women to shave their heads. I know monks have to do it every couple of weeks as part of the monks regular rituals but I have no idea why old women would do it too.
Eric then took us to see the Pagoda where a cremation was due to take place in the afternoon. It's basically a massive fire in the grounds of the village Buddhist temple. We looked into the fire pit where the body is placed and there were still the remains in there of the last person who'd been burnt. I'm not great at human anatomy, but it looked like a hip and someone's leg bones were still sitting on the grate! The heat really was unrelenting and I could feel myself burning up inside, so I went to sit still in the shade for a bit whilst the others went inside the pagoda to take pictures of another big Buddha statue.
Another bumpy tuk-tuk ride and we had a gorgeous pasta picnic lunch made by Eric's wife, Lida, in a tiny village near a school on the river. Then another long, but thankfully breezy, tuk-tuk ride on an even more bumpy dust track to a river "port" for a ride upstream to another floating village, complete with school, crocodile farm and shop. An amazing afternoon was spent sipping beers at a floating cafe, and shooting the passing kids paddling home from school.  What a life.
The road back was again long bumpy and dusty, but  we passed through some stunning dusk lighting. A small boy was pulling buffalo through the canal waters that ran along the side of the track. Ox carts made their way home driven by both men and women and the children were busy washing in the water ponds. It was a really contented peaceful ride.
Unfortunately though, due to the traffic in Siem Reap, we only had 20 minutes to shower, change and get back out again for a Khmer BBQ, so the photos from my big camera I didn't have the time to upload, but these snaps from my little point-and-shoot give a pretty good idea of what it was like.
The Khmer BBQ is not like home at all. Firstly each person cooks their own food and secondly the BBQ is sat on the table in front of you! It's basically a camping gas cooker with a large metal saucepan on top that has had it's bottom raised up into a dome shape and a few holes punched in the top of the dome. Chunks of pig fat are placed on top of the dome and then when they have produced a little fat which trickles down the sides of the dome, you are ready to put your meat/fish etc on the dome to cook. Also, water is poured into the bottom of the pan to allow you to cook noodles and veg to go with the meat. Under normal circumstances I would call this ingenious, but it wasn't such a good idea for me when it was already 38 degrees in the shade and the outdoor restaurant can't use ceiling fans as it would blow out the cookers.
It was so hot that unfortunately, after a failed attempt to find the ladies loo, I collapsed and fainted cracking my head on something concrete on the way down and landing on my back in a pool of liquid right outside the male urinals!!! Typical.
I don't remember too much for a short while afterwards, but when I came to, I was in the back of the restaurant in a chair surrounded by Cambodians fanning me with bits of cardboard, whilst being splashed with iced water. The next thing I remember is being pushed down a main road alongside the traffic in what felt like a rickety wooden wheelchair to the local hospital clinic which was more like a large doctors surgery I guess. A bit surreal at the time, and I was filthy dirty, soaking wet and stinky on the way home (as well as $100 lighter), but 24 hours on and although the head is tender to the touch, I can say that yesterday was my favourite day by far. And would you believe it.... I'm travelling with 3 other photographers and not one of them got a photo of me lying in dirt and stale pee - result - that's a facebook moment that wouldn't have died for a while!

Siem Reap and the world heritage site of Angkor

Angkor park is massive and requires at least 3 days to get round it all. We had a day. Angkor Wat is a famous temple in the middle somewhere. A very old one. I get that. Then there are other temples and stupahs and bayons and ruins and a whole load of other ancient piles of rock which I have to confess I didn't really get at all. But hey we aren't here for a history lesson, we went to take photos and by god did we. We started at 5am and raced in the dark in our tuk-tuk against a thousand other tuk-tuks to get a good spot in front of the temple (wat) and wait for the sunrise. As far as sunrises go, it wasn't the best I've seen and the building itself I hate to say it wasn't all that either. I was more interested in the full moon that was rapidly sinking behind us, but without a tripod it simply wasn't an option for my amateur camera - in fact it didn't cope much better with the Wat either!
We moved on to other decaying buildings and had instruction from Eric about symmetry and searching for the non-standard more interesting shot which I did get to grips with eventually. After a breakfast of hard boiled eggs and mango (on account of having eaten our hotel-provided bread ham and cheese at 630!), we headed back to Preah Khan for our shoot with the monks which was nerve-racking, challenging and not altogether comfortable. But we got there in the end and I have a few images I am happy with. We had taken gifts for the monks and were taken back to a low stilted house for a blessing from them which I really did get quite into. The 3 monks were chanting in unison over our bowed heads and it was actually quite moving.
The heat in the park was ferocious and at times I felt like I was inside a kiln. I have no idea how many bottles of water I got through today, but judging by the time it took to peel my clothes off later, I lost most of it in sweat. Lunch was thankfully another success at a lovely quiet restaurant just outside the park and then it was back in for Ta Prohm - famous for being the set of the Lara Croft films with the ancient ruins being consumed by  enormous tree roots. I played with the infra red filter on my camera and took a load of arty shots to liven things up a bit. Hot as hell here.

Mum, Greg and Eric then went to the Bayon as a final location, but I simply couldn't do it in the heat and ended up discussing the probability of another war in Cambodia with our tuk-tuk driver who estimates a 3-4 year wait for a war with either the Vietnamese or the Thais. It's good to know that cabbies are somewhat similar the world over.
A spare afternoon of swimming, reading and eating followed, which gave me a chance to upload some images to the cloud for safe keeping and do some more washing.
After dinner Eric arrived in a tuk-tuk and we went to Greg's posh spa hotel on the other side of town for some post-processing tuition using the Lightroom software that we finally managed to get installed on Mum's laptop. Brilliant, easy and something I think I will be using when I get home. So much less time-consuming than Photoshop and has all the tools I need and none of the ones I don't. Perfect.
All in all a very long, hot, exhausting but enjoyable day. Tomorrow we are spending the whole day in the surrounding countryside.... rice paddies and floating villages. Bring it on.

Battambang to Siem Reap

Luxurious hotel with huge breakfast selection and proper air con for only $28 per night, only problems were the lack of hot water (thankfully a cold shower was my preference this morning anyway) and we didn't get time to use the pool. Feeling run down today, not getting anywhere near my usual amount of sleep; to quote a very thought-provoking man who died 19 years ago tomorrow, "I need my sleep. I need eight hours a day and about ten at night" - and even with the hours in the van it's impossible to catch up on sleep with major potholes every few hundred yards.  Not entirely convinced our driver (Naro) has a licence either. He doesn't seem to know the order the gears go in or what the accelerator is for. Our van is now in serious need of a new clutch and/or gearbox - if it didn't before.

We started with a 3-shot assignment from the bossman Eric; he took us into Battambang town and stopped outside a building which housed an indoor market - an impossibly dark one too.  He told us we had one hour to return with 3 shots, and only 3 shots. The rest had to be deleted. The first was to be a portrait of someone older than 15 with a clear background. The second had to feature the colour red as its' main/only colour and the third had to depict typical Cambodia. He said he would not be coming with us but would wait by the van and wished us good luck. We set off to put our new skills into practice and all went our separate ways pretty much as soon as we entered the building.

The portrait (I thought would be the hardest for me) I tackled first. At the entrance to the market was the textiles section where I met a man making wigs on a sewing machine - we chatted (smiling and miming), but he wasn't happy to have his picture taken so I moved on and on and on, until I came to the next section which was mainly jewellery makers and it was here I got my shot. A jeweller with his magnifying glasses on his head. Eric later stated he liked the composition but that the shot was blurry - best I get to specsavers when I get home as it looked fine to me!  My red image Eric really liked - a carrot grater on top of an old burnt red coolbox - I quite like it too, although what it would ever be used for I have no idea. The third image turned out to be the hardest of all for me, and took the longest. Mainly because a couple of little boys kept wanting to be in the shot.  We went to the Gecko Cafe for Eric to critique our work and discovered that Mum and I had taken between 30 and 40 shots each and then deleted most to leave the 3 we were asked for, but Greg it turns out had taken 711 in an hour and had not really deleted any! I think Eric might have his work cut out changing Greg's snap-happy habits. We headed back to the hotel to check out and make the journey to Siem Reap. It was already much hotter than in the South. Despite repeated attempts to get Naro to step on it, the two hour journey still took us over three, by which point I was starving and in desperate need of a loo - and not the Cambodian-crouch kind either.

The hotel is where Eric's wife is the assistant manager, so we at least have a translator on hand. However, it's not up to the standard of the last two. Aircon not working, grotty bathroom with mosquitoes in and no bed netting. Still I requested a can of bug killer, had lunch which was gorgeous and we set off for a private photo shoot with some monks at Angkor Wat who unfortunately failed to turn up.  It's a major Buddhist festival today and so apparently the monks weren't allowed out.  We have rescheduled it for 9.30am tomorrow when we finish the sunrise shoot at the main temple of Angkor Wat.
Before dinner men came to have a look at my air con, they washed the filters, changed the gas and it now seems to be at least making some noise and blowing some air, so with any luck I will get some sleep. It's an early one tomorrow, we are being collected by tuk-tuk at 5am (ouch!!!!!) so I need to get my head down.
Photos to follow as still downloading - wifi speed sadly not great here either.

Floating on the Tonle Sap

If I am to attempt a decent amount of sleep, then I have 20 minutes to get the blog written, upload photos, check email and get prepared for tomorrow - this trip is amazing, but very full on. It feels like we don't stop. Today we got up at 5am aiming for breakfast at 6am, but chef wasn't awake, so we eventually got some anaemic toast and coffee at 630 and set off at 7am. All was not lost though as we spent 2 incredible hours on a boat going up and down the river shooting life in the floating villages. Fascinating, challenging and very frustrating. The boats were either going too fast or facing the wrong way but more often than not we were simply too far away.
Back to the hotel for a speed-shower and check out before driving further north a couple of hours to Pursat for lunch. Then another 2 hours to Battambang famous for its' killing caves and yet another Buddha temple. A hot trek to the top on foot and we were chatting with monks, shooting portraits and learning more about Buddhism and what it means to Cambodians - which it would seem is not the same as it means to other Buddhists around the world. This monk we found horizontal on top of the mountain smoking opiates through a rolled up palm leaf! I guess that's one way to reach true enlightenment. By the time we got back down the mountain, the light was fading and as we know, with dusk comes bats. Well I have to say I have never seen so many bats in all my life - either on TV or in person... it was a moment I think even Sir David's jaw would have dropped.

We had just reached the mini-van, hot, sweaty and extremely desperate for beer when we looked up and tens of thousands of bats were spewing out of a cave entrance in the rock half way up the mountain. We stood mesmerised as they produced what I can only describe as the kind of murmur we see starlings perform each Autumn from under Brighton Pier - truly incredible.... and then of course the smell hit us and it was time to leave. Something that will stay with me forever - the photo simply doesn't do it justice.
A gorgeous meal at the Gecko Cafe in Battambang in the evening before returning to the lovely Khemara I hotel and our air conditioned room. Awesome day indeed.