Manic Monday

Breakfast was great; eggs, bacon, toast, tea, just great. Although I hadn’t slept well for the last couple of nights as I had been getting the “night terrors” waking up about 5 or 6 times in the night and not realising where I was. So I was a little tired as I supped at my cup of hot brown and ran through the plan of action with James. Finish breakfast, got through the checklist for the Chinese visa one more time and then jump in a tuk-tuk to get down to the embassy as soon as they opened, at 8:30am. The first stages went well, and then a slight mis-communication with the lady behind reception led to a conversation with the tuk-tuk grand master, rather than just getting an idea of how much it would be. A bit of haggling later and we got him down to 10,000 Riel ($2.50, and I got to use my 10,000 Riel note that I didn’t really fancy keeping hold of for all that long) for the trip to the Chinese embassy. He ushered us into the tuk-tuk belonging to one of his minions and we were off.

The streets of Phnom Penh

It was nicely refreshing, a morning tuk-tuk ride in the cool morning air. About 15 minutes later we arrived at the embassy and paid the man his cash. As we asked to come inside the embassy to get a visa we were asked to hand in our cameras. No problem, we wouldn’t be needing them. We braced ourselves for the madness – in Bangkok, the Chinese embassy was a maelstrom with people fighting to get inside. When we emerged from the revolving door we saw just the one person waiting in line. Brilliant! This wouldn’t take long at all…

I handed my application form, photo and passport to the man behind the glass. He flicked through it and everything seemed fine. And then he asked me for my bank statements. My what? We had not been told about this! We would need bank statements to show that we would have $100 for every day that we wanted to stay in China, so 15 days would mean $1,500 dollars. And then he dropped the bombshell that we would also need printouts for our hotel bookings and a full itinerary of where and when we would be in the country, including train and flight details. Well this really put a dampener on proceedings and we turned to each other knowing full well that we didn’t have these on hand and would have to get back to the hotel to print them out, if they would let us. So we jumped in another tuk-tuk and sped back.

It took over half an hour to sort everything out, and we had agreed with the driver to wait for us and we would get the return journey with him back to the embassy. Obviously we didn’t want to take too long and were frantically gathering info and managed to get the hotel to print out a load of pages……for a small fee, of course. And then we were off down the road to find the tuk-tuk driver who had been charged with waiting for us whilst we sorted everything out. He was getting a good deal out of it and I don’t think that they work a huge amount of the day anyway, from what I have seen. We sped back to the embassy clutching our papers, hoping that there wouldn’t be a huge queue of people in front of us as they closed at 11:00am and didn’t reopen until the afternoon. This may cause a delay in our visa application and that just wouldn’t do. As we re-entered the waiting room we saw a line waiting to be seen, but only made up of about 5 or 6 people, so we were hopeful that we would get it in with time to spare.

James went first, and we waited while the chap behind the glass skimmed through the papers. There was a bunch for him to examine this time as they had asked for pretty much everything under the sun, and he fired a few questions back at James. These were relating to dates and travel plans, but he batted them back with no problem. Eventually he seemed to accept the documents and wrote out a receipt and said to come back on Thursday. I stepped up and claimed that my plans were the same as James’s and he didn’t even flick through them, just wrote out a receipt and sent me on my way. We both breathed a huge sigh of relief and set off from the embassy in search of a Canadia Bank ATM, the ones that charge the lowest withdrawal fees.

That's NOT an ATM....

It was a hot and long walk before we finally found the ATM, inside a nice air-conditioned shopping mall. We had taken a detour through the busy indoor market and would no doubt head back there again to see what bargains we could snap up. After lunch we grabbed some dollars from the cash machine, and as we wanted to get a few more than we would really need, for emergencies, we both typed in $180. James had gone for $100 in Siem Reap and been given a $100 bill, and it was great to see and hold one, but it was not good news in terms of practicality. That is why we went for $180 and not $200. The machine churned out a number of notes and it was only later that I realised that I had been slipped a $100 in with the rest of my 10’s and 20’s. Damn. But it felt good to hold that bill.

We made our way back to the hotel and relaxed for the rest of the afternoon, making a few plans for future hotels/countries along the way. When it came time to venture out and get some nosh we hit the riverside, as this is where the touristy place was. We found a nice place and had some good food, cheap beers and glum service (from the manager/owner, but we never questioned why she seemed so upset). Later in the evening we were attacked by all manner of hawkers, mainly under 14 years old, and James entered into an all-too-long conversation with one of them that I thought, although she seemed rather sweet and friendly, would only lead to trouble later on. A late night downpour meant we had to stay in the restaurant and order a couple more 50 cent beers (shame) until the rain let up and then we dashed back to the hotel in the eye of the storm. We had had a relaxed day, got our visa in  and avoided buying anything form the hawkers. Job done.