Day 27: More temples

Day 2 of our Angkor passes so we were off to see more temples. It was a much better day as there were less tourists and we were going under our own steam, without a guide, which was much nicer. Don't think temples make interesting reading, so am skipping over that bit though.

We did see something particularly good - the river of a 1000 linga. A linga is an ancient Angkorian fertility symbol they used in water purification rituals to encourage the crops, and it looks like the gherkin building in London. [JP says I'm not allowed to write "willy" - oops, :) ] Anyway, the people around the river decide to carve hundreds of them into the river bed to encourage the gods to look favourably on the river and ensure it would never run dry. Right the way down a stretch of the river you can see all these carvings in the shallows as it is the dry season at the moment, but in the wet season, they will all disappear again. The waterfall is really a trickle, but was a nice point to paddle in, hence JP looking a little damp in this photo.

We saw the making of palm sugar candy on the journey back to town. I didn't know palm trees had fruit other than coconuts, but clearly there are lots of different types of palm trees. The juice from the fruit is somehow extracted and then it is boiled up and then set into little moulds to make tablets like rounds of kendal mint cake, but more like the taste of barley sugar. Yum!

On the "home front" we also moved hotel rooms to the more upmarket bit of the golden Banana (yep, that's the name of where we're staying). It has a swimming pool, and much nicer rooms. Having spent a night with a dodgy tum in the dodgy room, I couldn't face another one.

Dinner turned out to be a spectator sport as we went to a restaurant which served BBQ, Cambodian style. JP chose the "degustation menu", which was four meats and some veg, brought to the table raw, but with a gas burner and tray so that he could cook it himself at the table. I was thrilled, as you can imagine, especially when it turned out that the meats in question were snake, kangaroo, crocodile and ostrich. Apparently most things still taste like chicken, although in the case of the snake, it has a fishy texture. As usual when we go out and something exciting happens, we didn't have the camera with us, so no BBQ photo this time.