The drive certainly gave our group a perspective of life outside of the main cities of Cambodia and the basic forms of agriculture that are practised here. The main attraction of the day were the pre-Angkorian ruins of Sambor Prei Kuk. These temples were built under the rule of King Isanavarman I during the seventh century. While still very impressive, many of these temples were significantly damaged or destroyed by American forces who were bombing the Khmer Rouge, who had set up their base among these ancient temples. The temples that remain were built with bricks and have held up extraordinarily well over the centuries with minimal restoration efforts.
We also learnt that this area had been heavily booby-trapped with land mines by the Khmer Rouge. These have now been completely cleared, although our group were very keen to stick to the marked paths!
There were just a couple of young local children who followed us through our tour of these temples, wanting to sell scarves to our group. "You buy for a dollar".
After our visit to the temples we headed to Kampong Thom for lunch. Unbeknownst to our tour guide, he had organised for us to have lunch at the Sambor Village Hotel, which our group had stayed at two years earlier. We enjoyed a very pleasant lunch, but there were some in the group who were very watchful of local wildlife and no, we did not see any snakes!
The trip from Kampong Thom through to Phnom Penh was very slow, with quite a few extensive sections of road works. We had to stop a couple of times for toilet breaks and a number of our group raised to the challenge (or should I say lowered) of using a squat toilet. Mrs Watt fearlessly led the way saying that you haven't been to Cambodia until you have used a squat toilet. During the road trip, our guide, Mr Ny (pronounced knee), showed us three movies, Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft (which features Ta Promh Temple), a documentary on the Angkorian and Pre-Angkorian temples, and then a lesser known movie called two brothers, which features Australian actor Guy Pearce in a story about twin tiger cubs who lived among the Angkor temples.
We arrived at our hotel in Phnom Penh at around 6pm, and were off to dinner shortly afterwards at a very well appointed hotel. As we sat down, the restaurant staff impressively opened up the roof above us to allow a sky view. We were again treated to a cultural show featuring traditional Cambodian dance while we enjoyed our meal.
Tomorrow we will be visiting a number of the tourist sites of Phnom Penh.
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