Star Royal Hotel Phnom Penh

... we were only spending two days there. When we arrived at our hotel, River 108 (http://www.river108.com), we knew it was going to be a completely different experience than the one in Bangkok when the doors to the hotel lobby were opened for us. Talk about swanky. The entire place was decked out in a silver '"art-deco-ish" theme. Our room, which was about the same size as our old condo in Marda Loop, came complete with a balcony, king size bed, 37 ...

... empty except a bare bed in the middle of each of them, on top of which are shackles of different designs, on the walls is a picture of the same room, with a corpse on the bed, taken when the place was captured by the Vietnamese army in 1979. In the courtyard there is a board with the rules that the prisoners must follow printed on it, one of the rules is they must not yell when receiving electric shocks. In several other rooms boards and boards of photos ...

... Palace which would've been the last part of the tour. It's very beautiful, I didn't really have enough time to spend there to see everything properly. Decided to get the boat to Siem reap ahead of the truck which turned up late Friday night and is spending another day here. Phnom Penh has some lovely bits and the resturaunts and cafes are nice but I'm not sure what I think of it as a whole and I don't really want to spend another whole day here so on I go. <br>

... with the driver who'd taken us for a ride - both proverbially and literally - the evening before) to take us across town to the cheap-seats, the lakeside backpacker area boasting cheap bars and rooms for only a few bucks. Everything was done in dollars, it was a good few days before we saw or had any reason to deal with the local currency (even ATMs spat out dollar bills). <br>Our driver had no fingers on one hand, and I accidentally elbowed him in the face whilst ...

... i.e. 3-way traffic flows or large 4-way intersections, there were none. You just plow ahead with your vehicle and slip in and out of the passing traffic; and this goes on in both directions at the same time. Obviously, they've got things down pretty well or there would be a helluva lot more accidents and I saw none. <br><br> On our way out of town I was greeted to all the smells that the city could deliver: dust, garbage, ****, various foods, exhaust, gasoline, sweat, etc. It ...

... demon's hearts, they have got the Khmer face but their activities are purely reactionary. They wanted to transform Campuchean people into a group of persons without reason, or a group who knew or understood nothing, who always bent their heads to carry out Angkars orders blindly. They had educated and transformed young people and the adolescent, whose hearts are pure, gentle and modest into hideous executioners who dared to kill the innocent and even their own parents, relatives ...

... t be too critical as they were worried about repurcussions.<br>That evening we checked out a couple of local bars and sampled Cambodian beer....<br><br>Sunday, Paul and Jennie left... the rest of us had full intentions of hiring bikes and exploring... Stephanie and Ozzie Bianca did just that, me and the 2 Finnish girls sunbathed, read, ate and drank at the lodge til about3, then got the owner to give us a ride to the lake.... we hung out with the locals we'd met the day before then ...

Staff at Conversations with Foreigners have done everything possible to make us feel at home and protected - not an easy task in Phnom Penh.<br><br>We had a week and a half of orientation prior to starting classes, time to find all the bits and pieces we would need (local SIM cards, ATMs, health services etc), attend a few workshops, learn some basic Khmer language and plan a few English lessons. <br><br>The Cambodian picnic is an experience. Riverside is the place to be in the ...

... the Tonle Sap river, which is connected to the Mekong at Phnom Penh, struggles to carry all the south-flowing water and gives rise to a remarkable geographic phenomenon. Unable to cope with the flow, the river reverses its direction and 'pushes' the water back up north again. The result of this is the dramatic expansion of the Tonle Sap lake that floods its boundaries for miles around. The Angkorian civilisation made use of this and populated this area primarily to harvest the ...