Day 38 - The Heat Always Wins

We started the day early-ish in an attempt to beat the heat (spoiler alert - the heat always wins) and headed for breakfast at a place called The Shop. Our hotel's manager is very chatty and is always offering us tips. Today's was basically 'don't go the way you know to walk to town, go this way down the backstreets and see how real people live.' Obviously we couldn't not take his advice and ended up getting lost whilst people doing their laundry and going about their lives looked puzzled. But luckily the manager was following us (?!) and put us on the right path. At The Shop You could get a regularly named breakfast (like Eggs Benedict which I had) or a celebrity named fun breakfast. Matt had the David Beckham. Rather than having any link to football or sarongs it seems it was only named after DB cause he's English. You could also have a Jackie Chan, a Gerard Depardieu or a Jane Fonda.

Next up was the Royal Palace. It's like Bangkok's Royal Palace except much more expensive to get in, less crowded and less spectacular. It was fine, I liked the Angkor Wat model and the gates but otherwise same same. And it was horrifically hot even at 10am so we spent a chunk of our time there sitting on a step and the rest of the time sighing and whinging. They did have some beautifully air conditioned exhibition rooms featuring elephant boxes (literally hundreds of elephant shaped trinket boxes) and more creepy mannequins and models.

After the Palace we went to the National Museum. It had the most painful audio tour ever. There were 237 audio tour stops, each in front on a statue or painting (mainly statues). Each audio description was on average 2 minutes long and we were not willing to spend 474 minutes listening to every stop especially as the first 20 seconds was a musical intro and a guy very slowly reading the exhibit name. The most fun part was watching people pose in the garden for photos e.g. sniffing flowers or holding an arm up seductively. I think we managed less than an hour before we could feign interest in yet another broken statue no longer and went for lunch at a Khmer restaurant called Kabbas. It was cheap and delicious. I had Amok and Matt had Lok Lek, traditional Cambodian dishes I'd like to learn to make (and maybe will). We tuk tuk'd back and spent the next hour or 2 air conning.

At 4.30 we were picked up for a sunset boat trip. It was free beer and soft drinks but we were pretty much the only people in the Brit frame of mind of 'get your money's worth'. Our tour guide was a tourism student and gave a fast paced and detailed guide to the rivers and surrounding buildings. There is a lot of investment happening in Cambodia and so much construction going on. It'll be a very different place in 5 years time. Sadly it was pretty cloudy so the sunset happened a little earlier for us than expected but was still a fun trip.

We did a post-boat geocache and then had some burgers and fries on the walk home. I think I've eaten more burgers this trip than I do in a typical year. When you're a tourist eating local food every day I think you brain goes into rebellion mode and craves something else. (That or I just want the cheese). We walked back to near our hotel and went to the 'secret bar' next door that the helpful manager obviously told us about. It was behind what looked like an old coke machine and was nice and hipster inside. There was a guitar and singer duet for a while who were great and the cocktails were excellent. Matt could even get Cheltenham signal!

A lot of blogs and guidebooks were read said most people rush a couple of days in Phnom Penh and quickly move on as it's nothing special but we definitely could stay longer. However it's off to Siem Reap tomorrow and past the half way point of our trip. Eek!Read more