Wednesday, 6 May, Siem Reap (Angkor)                                                  

See that tiny speck on the top of the ruins of Koh Ker?  Well. that's Dave, after he climbed up to the top to see what turned out to be a very ordinary view!  In times past, so we've been told, there was also a giant male organ carved in stone there, but DB says that's missing. 

The Khmer people of the 10th century obviously had no inhibitions about genitalia featuring prominently on religious and royal temples - and we were told that by no less an authority than one of the curators at the Cambodian National Museum in Phnom Penh the other day.  At first, we didn't know what she was talking about - the correct term is "linga", which confused us just a little.

Another temple still has the artefact intact - only because it would have been too heavy to lift it our of the stone it was embedded in it  (see right).

We came all this way (130km north east of Siem Reap) because we'd heard about this temple which looks as if it had some Aztec connection, and we were tired of the crowds around Angkor.  Mind you, we've been left off lightly at Angkor, since it's the off-season, but at peak times, the ruins attract 4,000-6,000 visitors a day!
   

Koh Ker has only recently been added to this list of suggested places for tourists - main reason  is that the area had been heavily sown with land mines in the years of the Khmer Rouge resistance to the Vietnam invasion.  This was resolved only in the 1990s, and then began the task of clearing the mines.  One information board says that up to 2007, more than three thousand mines were retrieved and disarmed by CMAC (Cambodian Mines Action Cenre). 

I still stuck closely to the established paths.  I'm not that stupid.
   

Oh...and here's a photo I almost forgot to include:  This was seen on the way back from Koh Ker today.. You might have to look hard to see it properly.

Three fellows with their motorcycles fully loaded with PIGS!  Yes, that's right, dead pigs.  I've seen plucked chickens being carried like this before, and once, a single pig, but never before this organised transport of the pig carcasses.  It makes me shudder a little, but since we continue to eat pork dishes while we're here, I suppose there's no real problem as long as the transporting doesn't take too long in this heat.

Tonight, we headed out to dinner at one of the hip joints in Siem Reap: Sugar Palm restaurant, which is attracting full houses since it was mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide.  All the kudos were well deserved - good food and service, pleasant surroundings in an old wooden house, except for the couple of ex-pats at an adjoining table who thought everyone in the restaurant wanted to hear their very loud voices and booming laughs.   And no, we didn't have any pork dish....

Tomorrow, we're off to Bangkok, possibly the hard way - by train from the Cambodian border.        Next: a chaotic border crossing