Kampot

Having enough temples I headed back to Phnom Penh, making it through Battambang this time. This town was cheap, nice and quiet, with French mansions along the river bank. There's plenty of peaceful countryside around, with some mountains standing among rice fields. The mountains are important and sacred to Khmer, since most of the country is plain. Many of the mountains have wats (monasteries) on their top. During the Khmer Rouge some caves in the mountains were used to throw in the bodies of their victims, these days the bones and skulls were collected and presented to visitors with a request for donation. It's not easy.
Coming back to Phnom Penh I still hadn't enough stamina for sight seeing in the capital and after a couple of days left for the south. The town of Kampot is a quiet place on the river, again the French boulevards with shattered overgrown yellow buildings - after seeing plenty of these places in Lao and in Cambodia, it still has its charming effect. The town is near Bokor mountain. Only the French would think of an idea to bring elephants and cut a road right through the thick jungle bushes, all around the slopes, to the plain uphill where they built a 3-storey hotel-casino watching all the Gulf of Thailand, a church, and some mansions. All that is left of the buildings is just the outside. There're remaints of a big cannon platform just above the church, made in China and served the KR to exchange compliments with the Vietnamese who took the opposite hill, with the hotel... The wind is wild up there, going through the empty rooms with a wail... It's a ghost place, the spookiness comes with a beatiful scenery and this makes it a one of a kind experience. All the forest covering Bokor mountain is declared as national park, and there supposed to be plenty of wildlife, but I've just seen birds, many though.