We stayed in Siem Reap for a couple of extra days after our tour had finished, and everyone apart from Alan had gone home. On the way back from one of our temple visits with the group, we had all visited the Cambodia Land Mines Museum. Aki Ra who runs it used to be a child soldier during the Khmer Rouge regime, and now he and a team of twenty spend their time finding landmines and either deactivating them or blowing them up. He happened to be at the museum on the day we visited, and Simon got talking to him, and he asked us if we wanted to go along with him to work one day.

Alan came with us and we met Aki Ra at his museum at nine in the morning, then he took us in his car to the area he's currently working in. We stopped off a couple of times on the way to pick up fruit and rice for the guys as a thank you for letting us gatecrash. When we arrived, we had to sign a disclaimer (felt a bit nervous at that point) and then we got into protective gear and he showed us around the minefield (we followed very close behind him the whole time!). They found a mine while we were there, and we watched, from a safe distance, while they exploded it. Aki Ra had pointed at a safe place for us to crouch down, and then we noticed that the rest of his team were standing about fifteen feet behind us so we moved pretty quickly.

Afterwards, we went swimming in the nearby lake with some of the guys from the team - it was ridiculously hot and so it was nice just to get in the water; we dived in fully clothed. We stayed with them while they had their lunch (rice, eggs and a monkey which someone had caught and skinned while we were there - yuk!) and then headed back to town for lunch (no monkeys) and a relaxing afternoon. What an amazing experience - we were really lucky to be in the right place at the right time. We didn't mention it to our mums until after we'd come back in one piece :)

The next day was our last full day in Siem Reap and we went along to the Kantha Bopha children's hospital to give blood. The hospital is run by a guy called Dr Beat (he is actually a real doctor despite the crazy name - he happens to be a cellist as well) and provides free healthcare to Cambodian children. We both felt glad that we'd had the time to do it, and it turns out that we both have the same blood type - that's handy!

The following morning we were up and out by half past seven and a tuktuk picked us up to take us to our coach, ready for a ten hour (or so we thought) coach ride to Bangkok - that's a whole other story...