Phnom Penh

No, my spell-check isn’t on the blink, it is the capital city of Cambodia. It isn’t all that far from Siem Reap and we had arranged a bus ride there, mainly because there is no rail system to speak of in Cambodia. It was only $12 to get there but we could have got it even cheaper, but having read some reviews on the coach companies it seemed that the Mekong Express Limousine Bus was the way to go as they ran a pretty tight ship. We were getting picked up at the hotel at 8:45am so we had enough time to grab a proper breakfast before leaving. As we waited we remarked that the Angkor Pearl could not be faulted, apart from the fact the place didn’t have a balcony, but that was nit-picking.

A ram-shackled little coach arrived to pick us up and drop us at the bus depot to change vehicles. The larger Mekong Express bus was waiting and we had seats booked, which made it already a better system than the US Greyhound! It was a half-decent coach, and we were looking at a journey of around 6 hours, which by our standards is small potatoes. There was only about 5 Westerners on the bus, including us, and we had been expecting many more as it seemed like the only way to get through Cambodia and into Vietnam. But then again, I don’t think that Phnom Penh is on many peoples Bucket List of places to go. And we certainly didn’t plan on spending 5 nights there when we began planning our trip, but as we would need to sort out the Chinese visa there we would need longer than we anticipated.

A happy James in the bus station

The journey was pretty uneventful, apart from a very long, slow and bumpy road when we got stuck behind a dump truck. We stopped for lunch at noon and carried on until we hit the capital city……not that you would realise it from the surroundings.

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Our bus station was “somewhere” outside the city centre, so we had to tuk-tuk it there before we could grab a shower and some food. Fortunately, the driver was really slow, had a death-wish at crossings and couldn’t find the hotel. Eventually he asked another driver and as we headed along the street it turned out that our road was closed off, for reasons unknown. So we had to lug our gear the last few metres before we finally made it to the hotel. It seemed good enough for under a tenner a night, but we were instantly longing for the comforts and friendly staff of the Angkor Pearl. Once we had unpacked our things and showered we noticed a long line of ants along the main wall. Not a good start. This would never have happened at the Angkor Pearl. They were heading into the bin, which had only contained a used wet-wipe and an empty bag of cashew nuts for a few minutes. But they had found it and had told their mates. The staff had no ant powder and no free rooms to move us to, so we emptied the bin and used our insect repellent to stem the flow.

There was no tourist area/Pub Street for us to visit, unlike in Siem Reap, but it was only our first night and we needed to get back and complete the Chinese visa for the next day. We grabbed some food at a small bar (we nearly went for the traditional Cambodian fired rice with red ants, but skipped it, this time) gulped down a 75 cent (ouch!) beer and headed for home.

Nom nom nom

Once back we got the Chinese visa documents out and spent a good hour or so going through everything with a fine toothed comb. We had the docs completed, our route planned, our passport photo and the fee in US dollars all ready for the embassy. We could now relax and “take the edge off” with a large Cambodia beer and watch the highlights of the Premier League games. Hopefully there would be no ant attacks in the night and we would wake up refreshed and ready to hit the embassy early in the morning.