Udong in the morning...

Since arriving in Cambodia i don't seem to have had much time to visit anywhere outside of Phnom Penh. This weekend was relatively free so Silke (a Dutch friend) and I decided to drive 45 km northwest of Phnom Penh to the ancient city of Udong. Udong was the Cambodian capital from the latter stages of the Khmer Empire and the seat of Cambodian kings from 1618 to 1866. Almost all the buildings of the former royal city were destroyed when Lon Nol launched air strikes against Khmer Rouge hideouts in the 1970s; other sites were later blown up by the Khmer Rouge. A Khmer Rouge prison was located here and a memorial to the victims was erected in 1982, with torture devices and bones from mass graves on display, as well as murals depicting Khmer Rouge atrocities.

We first went into the Buddhist Centre that is located at the bottom of the hill. It's a fairly new set up by the looks of things but really impressive. It has a whole series of big buildings that are used for ceremonies and meditation. We were invited in to one ceremony and then filmed! Very bizarre experience, we were asked to kneel and bow to the monks. We then had a walk around and ended up walking through the area where all the nuns live. These lovely old ladies who were so happy to see us. They would smile with these big toothless grins. We were then ushered into one building and to our horror there was a dead monk lying there in a refridgerated box. He was a special monk and apparently sometimes they keep them lying there in state for years!

We then walked up the hill to Udong, it's not anything too big but it was so hot, and Silke and i thought we should observe the request for us to take off our shoes! We then proceeded to burn our feet the whole way to the top, which was very frustrating when we realised that everyone else had kept them on! There were fantastic views from the top - flat countryside with sugar palms doted across it. The temples were beautiful - slightly spoiled by the number of hawkers trying to sell us flowers and drinks. We walked around and generally took everything in but we didn't stay long, mainly because of the heat. We walked back down the hill the opposite side to the way we came up. And then drove around the base of Udong.

On our way back to Phnom Penh we stopped at a small local restaurant that overlooked a few rice paddies and had Udong in the distance. We were sitting enjoying the view when a series of ladies decided to try and sell us some "snacks" we bought a couple of different things including lotus seed pods, and some bean and sticky rice stick, but decided to decline when it came to the deep fried crickets.

We got back to Phnom Penh and decided that we had time to do another trip in the afternoon so we travelled South this time.

Phnom Tamao in the afternoon...

As we drove out of town the heavens opened and it absolutely poured with rain, i have no idea how the driver managed to continue driving, i couldn't see a thing. We were heading for Phnom Tamao Zoological Garden and Wildlife Centre, which is located about 50 km south of Phnom Penh. It's a rescue zoo primarily for Cambodian native animals, which covers about 100 hectares at the moment but has about 1200 hectares allocated to it so it has a huge amount of room for expansion.

The zoo is home to over 60 sun bears, heaps of monkeys, a few tigers, two lions (!), crocodiles, and numerous other creatures. It was really well set up and the animals were healthy and as far as we could tell happy. The zoo has a lot of support Wildaid and Free the Bears and a number of other conservation organisations are working with them to help their operations run smoothly.