Day 45 - Phnom Penh

  Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Wednesday, October 17, 2007

We had a SHOCKING night's sleep last night.

For once the bed was comfortable, the sheets were clean, the pillows weren't great, but the real problem was the heat. It was extremely warm in the room, even at 11pm, so we both struggled to get to sleep.

Technically we did have 'air conditioning', but we were back to our hamster-powered air con unit from the first night of our travels. However this time we had no windows near our heads, just a big door to the balcony in the worst possible location. It was impossible to sleep.

I sat up and watched all sorts of random telly, while Katie tossed and turned in a vain attempt to drop off.

We both had very broken sleep, lying there bathed in sweat and getting increasingly angry at not being able to sleep despite paying quite a lot to stay in a relatively nice hotel.

It was soon noisy outside with the early morning traffic, so we had to close the balcony door and sit in the heat again... great !

We eventually woke for the final time, threw open the window and checked the watch, and we were amazed to see that it was 12pm. We had slept late, but not well.

As we now only had a half day, we decided to check out the city on foot.

It was REALLY hot outside, way over 30 celsius, and it was even hard to walk in the direct sunlight, so we tried to find shelter wherever possible.

There was no point jumping in a tuk-tuk because we were only going 5 mins down the road next to the river, to the Wat temple and then onto the National Musuem and the Royal Palace.



We've hit Wat/temple overload already, so stayed outside this one (we're in Angkor Wat in a few days !), and after finding the Royal Palace closed for lunch we took that as a hint and had lunch ourselves.

We found ourselves in a nice restaurant, with air con, and fairly pricey food. It was good though, I went for a Khmer rice dish with "king prawns" which weren't particularly regal in size but very tasty, and Katie was very happy with her fish curry.

After lunch we walked to the Independence Memorial, where we were courted by a very nice tuk-tuk driver with perfect English (he could even do regional English accents including a very disturbing mockney), so we decided to book him tomorrow to take us to the Killing Fields centre, and to see some of the harder-to-reach parts of town. At least he would be chatty and entertaining, we thought...

We then hit the National Musuem, which was nice without being spectacular; the most interesting thing for me was that when the Khmer Rouge took over the city they left the musuem to rot (considering it bourgeouise), so it was predicatably looted by the locals.

Somehow the government got most of the key exhibits back, so you get a good feel for the skill and hard work of the ethnic Khmer people, and there are some very impressive statues and carvings.



By now it had clouded over, but we headed to the Royal Palace. On the way we befriended a really cute little girl called Nettie, who asked us to buy some water from her.

You're not supposed to buy things from kids here (apparently they're controlled and exploited by unscrupulous adults), but this child's smile would melt your heart. We agreed to buy some water after visiting the Palace, and she begged us to remember her.

We were back with Nettie sooner than planned following Katie being denied a ticket to the Palace due to her "inappropriate dress", because she was wearing a vest top which exposed her shoulders, the hussy ! ;) 

We had the same thing in Thailand, where Katie bought a silk wrap to cover her shoulders, but the Cambodians were having none of it. It was no change, no entry.

I wasn't too gutted to miss out as we have another day tomorrow and the weather wasn't great today, so after some good-natured haggling we enjoyed our extremely expensive bottle of cheap water, and headed off to find an internet cafe.

It's from there that I write this update, after updating our days in London and Bangkok before arriving here in Phnom Penh.

Hopefully we'll get a better sleep tonight & better weather tomorrow, as it could prove to be a very emotional day, with some horrific and challenging exhibitions of genocide ahead of us before leaving the capital.

Phnom Penh does appear to be more expensive than most of the other places we've visited, with Dollars the currency of choice (rather than the local "Riel"), and some pretty high prices for food & drink... hopefully it will get cheaper off the tourist track, but as our next stop is Siem Riep and the magnificent temples of Angkor Wat, this might be easier said than done !

We had a great dinner tonight in a nice local restaurant around the corner, Katie had the famous Cambodian 'crispy rice cakes' which are dipped in a sweet chilli sauce. DELICIOUS ! One of our favourite meals so far...



Hopefully we'll sleep better tonight, fingers crossed...

lots of love,


Al & Katie xx