On one day we celebrated my grandmother's birthday and many relatives came. I met so many cousins that two hands are not enough to count them. It's a big family! We had a "golden pig". It's a roasted pig that Chinese often serve as a birthday dish. Staying at my aunt's place we enjoy her hospitality. She goes to the market several times a day and brings back food. It's so much that we are not hungry when it comes to real dinner in the evening. In her backyard there are many coconut and banana palm trees. How cool is that! We got fresh coconut milk and those delicious mini bananas off the trees.
When we don't eat we discover the Battambang area. Although Battambang is the second biggest city in Cambodia we find it still very small and there is not too much to do here. What we have never done in France and Germany, we do here: riding a scooter. Once we tried what we had seen so many times in China, Laos and Cambodia. Sarah, Daniel and I were sitting on one single scooter. It was fun! Cambodia has a weird law. While the person steering the scooter is obliged to wear a helmet, all other persons on the scooter don't have too. We borrow my aunt's scooters and visit famous places like Phnom Sampeau, where Pol Pot and his Khmer rouge fellows killed many Cambodias, Wat Ek Phnom and Phnom Banan. Latter ones are small sites with temples that look like the ones in Angkor Wat.
Sights are free of charge for Cambodians but Sarah had to pay as a foreigner. In Phnom Sampeau we were stopped by a guard who asked Sarah to pay her admission fee. Just for fun we told him that Sarah is Cambodian too. So he asked her in Khmer whether she speaks Khmer. Sarah were taught some Khmer by my cousins a few days ago and was able to answer. The guard let her pass for free.
