Phnom Penh - Cambodia

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Phnom Penh airport was what I can only describe as a ZEN airport (at least on the national arrivals terminal).

This was the first and only time I've seen a terminal with its own little ponds, and flowers, completely open space with no roof...so while you wait for your suitcase you can hang around by the ponds and admire the multicolour flowers...unless it's the late hours of the afternoon and the mosquitos are trying to make a dinner out of you, in which case you stick to the luggage belt and stare at the ponds and the multicolour flowers from a safe distance... We were having our malaria tablets every day but better not tempting your luck...

This time we weren't offered a car from the hotel so we took a taxi. We already knew the price was fix but still... we tried to haggle over the price, after one month haggling every day for everything we just started haggling without even thinking about it. It's like it's expected from you and people would take you for a fool if you don't do it...

Anyway, when we finally got to the hotel it was already dark and we were quite tired so we walked around the hotel and congratulated each other for choosing such a wonderful place. :-)

 

 

It wasn't the cheapest nor the closest to the river but like the Loreal's ad...we were worth it!

The first thing we did was to make good use of the swimming pool...I would swear I could hear the swimming pool calling our names... so 5 minutes into the hotel and the 3 of us were already in the water. :-)

Now it was time to find something to eat and luckly for us we were very close to a street full of decent restaurants so after a 5 minute walk we found a fantastic restaurant colonial style. Food was good and we didn't even have to use the chopsticks! they provided us with fork and knife...how luxurious was that!!

Right in front of the restaurant there was a shop were you could buy any film, tv series or documental ever made for one dollar each. It was truly amazing, there were lots of these shops in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, it was a normal shop with its air con, selves, and lots of dvds fully labelled and wrapped up... and they were as good as the originals with special features and everything!

Breakfast was included so we ate until we couldn't eat anymore and left for our first day in the capital...

The plan was to visit the temples and they weren't too far away so we decided to walk all the way there instead of taking a tuk-tuk... at some point we took the wrong turn and ended up walking along a non very touristic street...it was early in the morning but the sun was starting to make its presence noticed, and between the heat and the stink from all the rubish in the street we were all starting to regret the idea of walking...then we realised we had taken the wrong turn
without any argument from anyone we all decided to do the rest of the trip by tuk-tuk. The stink was too much to bear...so we stopped the first tuk-tuk we found, haggled for a few minutes over the price and off we went to the temples.

The price to enter the temples was exorbitant in comparison with an average salary, if I recall correctly it was something like $20 each although I suppose they would have a different price for locals. We got a bit dissapointed with the temples...they all had a clear Thai style unlike the temples in Siem Reap. You wouldn't say that out loud in Cambodia or you could end up with a black eye but although they were worth a visit, the temples in Thailand which follow the same style are far more impressive.

I suppose in the same way Vietnam was taken by the Chinese for about 1000 years and now you can see the chinese influences all over, in Cambodia you can see the Thai influences from their occupations.

At 11:00 or so they closed the temples, yes that's right they closed the whole place until 14:00 so instead of hanging around until then we decided to go back to the hotel and go back to the street with all the restaurants to try our luck with another one, so we picked a tuk-tuk at the exit from the temples, haggled with the driver and when the price was right we hopped onto the vehicle and made our way back to the hotel and from there to the restaurant.

Then we spent some time by the swimming pool and by late afternoon we decided to go and check out the river at night and find a place where to have dinner.

We got a tuk-tuk from the hotel...haggled a bit about the price and a few minutes later we were by the river... it was quite dissapointing so we decided not to go back the following day as we had planned, nonetheless we found a fantastic restaurant by chance. It was very popular with foreigners and it had all the walls filled with previous customers comments...from people all over the world in all languages and the food turned out to be really good. I'm sure it was recommended by some guide book otherwise how would you explain the influx of foreigners all going to the same restaurant? And we saw a couple of local guides who brought their group of foreigners to the restaurant...the things you find by chance sometimes...

The following day we decided to spend it by the swimming pool, reading and drinking, sorry re-hydrating... until it was the time to say good-bye Cambodia and go to the airport.