After our stay at the Cambodian Wildlife Sanctuary we headed back to Siem Reap for a couple of days it was so nice to have a hot shower and chill out for a couple of days. Then we set off for Cambodian's capital city Pnomh Penh. We were warned that the road going there was awful and they were right, it was a six hour journey and for about 4 hours of that there wasn't a road. It was just a big muddy field with cars, buses, trucks, and motorbikes trying to find the best way through the mire. That meant that people weren't really sticking to their side of the road and we just wove in and out with each other along the way. You are probably thinking that, that is an accident waiting to happen and well it did. A motorbike pulling a trailer cut our minibus off causing it to crash into a boundary fence, our driver stopped to look at the damage, which was minor, and continued on the way. As our minibus continued we overtook the motorbike and they just waved to each other good humouredly! We have seen no signs of road rage across here even though there is so much traffic on the road, most vehicles are courteous to each other.
When we reached Pnomh Penh we soon found our hotel which was alright but the staff were a bit weird, not very friendly or helpful . The hotel was very close to the riverside so we headed out to explore. Also close by was the Royal Palace which was lit up like something out of Disney World.
We went to a nearby restaurant and had just finished our meal when suddenly we heard a loud explosion, all the Westerners jumped and looked around wondering what was going on. Turns out that we had timed it for the celebrations of the King's coronation, he has been on the throne for ten years now, and they were setting fireworks off. Sadly on the last day of the firework celebrations
there was an accident, one woman died and four people were injured.
We headed back to the hotel and as it was so close to restaurant, shops etc we asked if we could book another night, which they said was fine..The next day we woke up bright and breezy and went down for breakfast, the receptionist then told us that the room we were in was booked for that night so we would have to move to room 9, which we were fine with. She then asked us what we had planned for that day so we told her that we we were hoping to go to the Killing Fields, so she said she would get us a tuktuk, but we told her not to bother as we were not sure yet what we were definitely doing. We actually prefer to get tuktuks outwith hotels as they are usually cheaper and get less business, so we would rather give money to them.
Well did she not go and tell the tuktuk driver anyway, and then he proceeded to watch us through the foliage in the courtyard for the whole of our breakfast. He was like a very bad undercover cop, peering at us expectantly, very off-putting, then as soon as we finished he came out of the bushes saying"tuktuk." We said, " Maybe" and went to our room, luckily when we came out of our room he had left!
After we returned from our day out we were told that our luggage had been moved to our new room, a room 12, mmmm not what we had been told. They then took us to the room, honestly we basically had to climb a ladder to get there, it was a bed in a mouldy smelling room, which was more like a cupboard. There was a shower but no hot water, we decided to leave and ended up at a lovely hotel called 1 Up Banana.
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