Red Hot Cambodia

Since the last post we've been on a few trips around south Vietnam and we're now in Cambodia.
On Sunday we visited the Cau Dai holy temple, north of Saigon. Cau Dai is a religion founded in the 1920s - an amalgamation of Buddhist, Hindu and Catholic doctrines and ehtics. They have a bizarre retinue of saints, including Victor Hugo. The temple was amazing confection of pastel kitsch, but rather magnificent all the same. The worshippers all dressed in white and sat on the floor, rather like in a mosque only crossed-legged not kneeling. They meditate while a band and choir chant from the back of the temple. It's pretty hypnotic to watch, as long as you forget about the hundreds of flash cameras going off from the tourists on the balconies.
We also went to the Cu Chi tunnels - a warren of former guerilla hideouts just north of Saigon, used by the local villagers to fight various enemies including the US soldiers. You get to see the vicious bamboo booby traps they built and have a chance to crawl along some of the tunnels too (though it's a special one they've widened for fat westerners, twice the size of the original tunnels, which are titchy). You could also fire a machine gun at pictures of rabbits if you wanted, but at $1.50 a bullet it's an expensive few seconds! We didn't indulge.
One other unexpected highlight was the Vietnamese guide for the tunnels, who called himself Slim Jim and spoke almost exclusively in cockney rhyming slang. When he found out we were from England he wouldn't stop talking to us, asking if we were hank marvin (starvin) at lunchtime, but not to worry - we were off for a ruby murray (curry). At the the toilet break from the bus he told us it was time to 'siphon the python' and 'shake hands with the unemployed'. He was hilarious.
We then headed to the Mekong delta in the far south of Vietnam for a few days. We packed quite a bit in, including a visit to one of the wholesale floating markets - boats piled high with mounds of pineapples and pumpkins and bananas. Riding up and down the water was a nice change from trains.
We had one grotty hotel though. The room was massive, but old and when we came back from our tea, a few mice had slipped in through a whole in the fire escape door and eaten our coconut candy. Judging by the trails of mouse poo behind the bed, we weren't the first people to have been visted.
From the Mekong delta we caught the slow boat to Cambodia - a full day on a baking, uncomfortable and very noisy chugging river boat travelling at exactly the same speed as the light wind, so we got no air. Getting off on to the shore was a relief, even if it was still about 35 degrees or more.
After a night in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh we've come up to Siem Reap in the centre of the country today. It's very different to Vietnam here. Much less developed and very rural. Plus it's totally flat - you can see for miles in every direction. We're heading off to visit the temples of Angkor tomorrow morning - should be a highlight of the whole trip. We'll add some photos afterwards...