Day 38

Siem Reap > Phnom Penh

Our bus was booked for 11am and I woke up to Alfie opening my curtain and telling me it was 10.30. Shit I thought to myself before I chucked some clothes on and packed my bag as fast as possible. After about 5 minutes (which I thought was fairly impressive) I met them in the lobby and we checked out. Immediately outside we hollered a TukTuk to take us to the bus office - saving us an hour walk of time we definitely didn't have. We arrived with 15 minutes to spare and checked in. Whilst we waited for the bus to arrive I went on a search for food as I hadn't had breakfast but came up fairly short - only finding a small egg bun thing from a drinks stall.

The ride was about 6 hours long as was fairly nerve-wracking. I'm not sure what it is about the bus drivers in Cambodia but they seem to test the limits of what makes me comfortable when it comes to overtaking. Luckily we were at the back so I couldn't see the road too much. Unluckily we were at the back so we could feel the bumps even more and our seats were higher so I had to make sure I didn't slam my head into the ceiling on the particular bumpy bits. Something I didn't anticipate for was for the bottom section of my seat to literally come detached from the chair and send me flying down the isle. After causing a bit of a stir and having all the Cambodians look at me laughing (hopefully with me and not at me), I change seat next to the window to hopefully avoid another incident.

We stop a couple times, once at a restaurant where I grab a smoothie, and once and some stalls where I grab a weird crab pizza ish thing as I still hadn't ate anything properly all day. Alfie ended up not liking his so I scored most of his too. We arrive in Phnom Penh at around 4pm and walk 30 or 40 minutes to our hostel - passing some very official government buildings. Whilst we wait to check in, I notice a hot wing challenge - without any information of what the challenge actually was - I was committed to do it tomorrow. We get shown our room where I was on the 3rd level of a grid of beds.

We head out to the night market and find the cheapest food we can find (for some reason Phnom Penh is much more expensive than Siem Reap) and sit on some mats on the floor where we figure out our next week in Cambodia. We then go on a search for a good dessert which for some reason was super difficult so we give up and head to 7/11 for some air conditioned snack browsing. We head back to our hostel and play some card games whilst listening to the end of their pub quiz which sounded much better than our one in Siem Reap. I pickup a bottle of water where I had a very interesting interaction with a British woman who had sprinted in from a TukTuk and demanded the clerk for their condoms - she ended up buying my water for me then sprinted back to her TukTuk. I then headed to bed after spending a few hours on the ascent of my ladder.Read more