Hopefully a little more palatable than the last overly large chunk.  Torn about what to post as have so much.  Whether to continue posting chronologically - or until the numbers indicate I've bored people enough, or whether to pick more entertaining entries.  Although part of this exercise is to figure out which are the better / weaker ones.  Anyway... 

9.  21:10  10/10/05

Yesterday evening we hauled ourselves from our room to Phnom Penh’s Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC), a fair distance down the road but still parallel to the river.  An airy, classier than usual venue kitted out in dark pine over a spacious first and second floor, it had little feel of Cambodian authenticity and wouldn’t have been out of place anywhere.  We had failed to find the rest of our group as the staircase to the originally unknown second floor was neatly tucked away in the corner of the room.  Heath, the American Neil and I supped at our soft drinks overlooking the street and river.  Neil bored me a little with his tediously broad style of conversation.  He never volunteered personal information or asked such questions as the rest of us did, always preferring wider, general topics of conversation.  And what he did come out with was rarely meaty enough to get interested about.  Heath and I eeked out of him that he had a girlfriend who he met through his work, but he didn’t seem comfortable talking about her, so we returned the conversational reigns to him.  “He can be a little dry,” Heath diplomatically offered, when we spoke of him later.   We finally found the hidden staircase and the rest of our group; Marlo, Miriam and Scottish Neil upstairs.  As they had already eaten, Heath and I decided to try a more conservatively priced restaurant a few doors down.  
      The balcony restaurant employed a young waiting staff and its walls were adorned with a variety of football posters.  I attempted to speak to one boy about it, pointing at the Michael Owen poster, but he just grinned back emptily, not confident enough to attempt navigating the language barrier.  After not eating all day, I was highly disappointed by my limp seafood salad.  When we had finished and were in the process of paying the bill, we were bought complimentary fruit, “free of charge,” the waiters confirmed.  Unsure whether this was regular or not, we re-settled in our seats and politely polished off most of the plate.  Then another was bought out.  We declined it, but it was still laid down and they stood there grinning.  Another plate too followed that.  We weren’t sure how to react.  It confused me and angered Heath, who thought they were taking the piss in some way, to embarrass us - which worked.  Heath plundered out ahead of me, I gave a polite, if weak smile and hands-together ‘wai’ of thanks in our wake.  We headed back to the hotel.
         
Up at 4.30am this morning (a good couple of hours before I went to bed the previous day) to leave for Phnom Penh airport.  It was a clean, fairly efficient travel hub from where we took the 50-minute flight to Siem Reap.  A small aircraft with double seats either side of a narrow aisle, I had to take care not to bash my head on the ceiling as I entered the main seating area.  Sitting next to a Scottish Neil, I learned a little more about him, and his week-old heavy cold.  He’d graduated from Strathclyde University but fallen out of love with his subject, before taking a year’s work at one of the largest call-centres in Glasgow – which he had hated, but was funding his travel.  He’d been to Canada, then Hawaii, before his China tour, and was going on to a north-west Thailand tour which would join up with the second half of my next one when we went south to the islands, then to Phuket off the west coast, and finally Dubai, before heading home.  He seemed tired and worn down by his persistent cold, would answer any of my questions but asked nothing of me in return.  He dozed for a good portion of the trip.
 
We’ve enjoyed some truly stunning temples near Siem Reap today.  I couldn’t help feeling they would have been improved by losing the amount of tourists littering the place, tarnishing its majesty.  If you’d accidentally stumbled across them, deserted, their magic would have increased ten-fold.  But of course that would never happen.  The detailed ninth-century stonework of variously imposing monuments was as staggering as the detail of the Vietnamese pagodas.  With no obvious other media by way of distraction, these ancient people couldn’t have been short of a minute or two in spare time.  But what if you weren’t that arty, or patient?  I suppose then it was the rice-fields, or farming.  Were people who just chipped at stone all day sneered at for doing something that was considered less worthy?  Ta Phrom was the most eerie, atmospheric and obviously impressive temple.  It featured in the Hollywood film, Tomb Raider, which I haven’t seen but could imagine false audience assumptions about artificial post production.  Twining, creeping trees spindled in and out of broken stone, upwards, reaching imperious heights where birds cawed in the heavens of the forest.  A forest which dwarfed everything underneath.  Utterly beguiling.
      Our first round of temples was completed by lunchtime - which seemed around 3pm due to our early start, and we were allowed some free time.  Miriam and I were dropped in Siem Reap’s town centre to withdraw cash, then went to get lunch together.  She’s generally an accomplished talker, so the meal wasn’t awkward as we swapped tales of friends and relationships.  Returning to the hotel I used our final spare hour to loaf pool-side at the hotel, quietly admire a girl across the water, and take a surprisingly enjoyable dip. 
      The final temple of the day was the scene for witnessing the sunset.  An extremely tall monument affording far-reaching views appeared second home to the swarms of children who pounced on our arrival, selling drinks, postcards, and any general tourist memorabilia.  Initially rampant in their sales pitches, they calmed once we’d settled in our places at the top of the monument.  When a more relaxed atmosphere had developed and dusk set in, we began chatting with the children and playing frisbee with them - which bought a good deal of simple, enchanting fun and warm laughter.
       Dinner was taken in the hotel restaurant as everyone was too tired to take a tuk-tuk into the town.  We all seemed pretty knackered by the long day, apart from the ever-cheery Marlo, who was evidently used to this sort of schedule.  Was it ever a bit like commuting for her?  “Don’t know,” she said.  “I’ve never had to commute.”  The good news is that we have an even earlier 4am start tomorrow morning in order to witness sunrise at the famously grand, national treasure Angkor Watt.  Thankfully we’re here for three nights, with the third day entirely free from the tour.  It is good to cram so much into a single day, but this touring game definitely needs a degree of stamina, and I’m flagging.  Obviously it would help to not stay out all night drinking as well, but even if we hadn’t, I think I’d still be shattered.

10.  18:08  11/10/05

Lying on a small stone section of the Angkor Watt temple complex, slightly more relaxed than the rest of our attentively perching group, I was only faintly conscious of the unremarkable sunrise peeping out behind the Angkor Watt - a metonym for Cambodia, the central image of its flag.  Too cloudy, the sunrise lacked any sharpness of colour, which the previous evening’s sunset also had.  All appeared bleary.  Which was a shame because the settings for both were beautiful.  We had tumbled out of the mini-bus still half asleep and fumbled out of the mosquito-dense rays of the headlights into pitch darkness.  Two small torches led the way as we carefully made for our viewing point. The ancient monument was soon riddled with tourists, and remained so after we had returned from breakfast.  We ate at a small hut restaurant nearby.  Marlo had told our names to the children selling tourist items, and they gleefully used them, shouting over at us by name to buy their goods.  
     Dangerously steep steps led to Angkor Watt’s highest point, giving spectacularly panoramic views.  My lasting memory of it will be a glaringly obvious intention to construct, rather than craft, a temple grander than any other.  Detailed as ever - but not as much as some - the expanding square borders give a spiralling, dizzing feel probably best appreciated from above.  Water borders forest borders more water borders walls borders the central temple structure. 
      That such ambition could have been imagined at the time of its creation, let alone attained and consistently maintained, is an incredible testimony to this branch of humanity.  Occasionally, I think we have a somewhat blinkered view of both ourselves in the context of geography and history.  Blinkered in terms of geography largely due to an understandable ignorance of other cultures thousands of miles away; but blinkered in terms of time as well, in the distasteful assumption that the progress of time irrevocably correlates to an all-encompassing positive progression.  That those who lived in other times were not equipped with the same capacity for creation, for thought, for living, for enjoyment, in the same way as people are today - or in a way which they were not entirely satisfied with.  The flip-side is that those same arguments could be used to validate communism.    
     Once we’d thoroughly explored Angkor Watt we were taken to a basic, ramshackle museum of landmine history and its Cambodian victims.  It had been set up and was run by a former Cambodian soldier named Akira, who had served on both sides and almost killed his own uncle in battle, before realising who the opposing soldier was.  Countless harrowing stories of lives and limbs lost decorated the hut walls, as well as gruesome statistics and a landmine field mock-up towards the rear.  A young Australian girl was teaching a small child to read in one corner, while other natives went about tending to the site, most of them missing a limb or two.  It affected and moved most of us.  So much so that I even bought a T-shirt.  Which takes some doing.  
 
Brief period of free time in Siem Reap town was spent online before taking the long walk back to the hotel to read by the pool.  Free time feels like the jaunty novelty you get when you finish school, go into the sixth form and discover the brilliance of not having to attend lessons all day.  Being able to wander around outside the school gates unaccompanied, so old and wise compared to those little kids in there.    
     Once I’d returned to the hotel I found more banking was needed so Heath and I headed back into town.  Discovering he couldn’t withdraw any cash here with the card he had, Heath descended into a small panic.  I calmed him down and offered to stand him a few dollars.  He could pay me back in Bangkok.  And he’d also now have reach Bangkok with us in the van, rather than fly as he had earlier planned having heard about the notoriously bouncing, rocky road to the Thai border from a fellow traveller.
     A small riverboat voyage alongside some local primitive riverlife was the next outing.  Our shell of a boat gave only unhealthy splutters and huge plumes of dark smoke in its first attempts at movement.  We shuffled unsteadily in our free-standing, creaky wicker dining chairs as the boats around us gracefully moved away without a problem.  Finally we moved, our boat still copiously spewing smoke.  Child beggars paddled towards us, some in what looked like large dustbin lids.  Others overcrowded in small boats, one with a monkey.  Once on the open river, free of the habitation, Heath was encouraged enough to take a dip, ignoring Miriam’s grating warning whinges about water contamination.  She later absurdly claimed to Heath that she would have joined him in the water if she had had her costume, despite her continued anxiety about the water during Heath’s immersion.    
 
Lying on my bed, scrawling the opening lines of this entry, Heath returned from the bathroom.  “Mate, can you do me a favour?” he asked, looking serious.  “It’s a bit...well..”  We’d grown close enough, but what was this? 
    “Yeah, sure, what is it?”  I got nervous myself.  What the fuck was he going to ask?  “Thing, is, my girlfriend, she normally...” 
     “-Spit it out, man!”  Please tell me he’s not going to ask me to check his sack for lumps.  Surely he wouldn’t?   “Well, I’m a hairy bastard, and she normally shaves off my neck hair because I can’t reach well enough.  Would you mind going over it?”  Thank god for that. 
    “Ok, then.  Don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ll have a go.”  He found it hilarious that he’d got me to do it, and as I carefully used his electric razor to strim his neck over the basin, wondering why he couldn’t have reached it by himself, he chuckled away about having to tell his girlfriend about this in his next email. 
 
Trip into town tonight for dinner under what looks like eerie, storm threatened skies.  Tomorrow an extremely welcome full day’s freedom from the tour, and proper rest.