But at 8am our bus arrived. Phew! However it looked nothing like the shiny new bus on our ticket and was quite old with hard seats and no air conditioning. But to be honest we were so glad that a bus had actually turned up that we didn't bother to argue and just got on. And off we went, though after about twenty minutes we pulled into what must be the Siem Reap bus depot where our actual bus was waiting; it turned out the first one was just the shuttle bus. Now the second bus still wasn't exactly brand new, but it would have been a top range luxury bus when it was and it had air conditioning that worked. Although strangly some of the seats were obviously from different coaches.
And so started our long journey to Phnom Phen. At one point we stopped in a town somewhere and were told we had to get off off the bus; we were slighlty concerned but it turned out it was just a toliet stop. After about 7 hours of travelling and having watched 2 films where I didn't understand a word that was said we arrived at the outskirts of Phnom Phen. Now if there had been no traffic it probably would have taken another 5 minutes but as it was it took another hour. The traffic was crawling and the reason was down to the unusal approach the Cambodians have to roadworks. Whereas in the UK we would have properly coned off areas, reduced speed limits and diversions where needed; in Cambodia they don't bother with any of that and just get going digging up whatever bit of road they need to. It is then up to the traffic to work out how to get by. In Siem Reap we saw a place where they had dug up the whole street and the traffic just went up over the pavement. Here we had to negotiate around diggers and the traffic fighting to come the other way.
Eventually we made it to our destination and were immediately met by the throngs of tuk tuk drivers, decided to just go with the first one who latched on to me, which in actual fact wasn't the greatest move as he didn't actually know where our hotel was. But I managed to knock his $5 down to 3 which was quite cheap and with some initial help from his friend and later from my guide book we made it to the hotel. He then tried to insist that he would take us to the airport the next day, but with his navigation skills we declined...
Had a very late lunch at the hotel bar, during which it poured with rain, then headed out for a quick look round the vicinity. We walked past the Silver Pagoda a big temple which is one of the main tourist sights, but didn't go in as it was closed. We then walked past the Cambodia-Vietnam friendship monument and down towards the independance monument. It is quite nice paved area around here and there were lots of Cambodians out playing badmington and football and other games.
Headed towards some restaurants which were in our guide books and met an Australian chap who claimed to have had his wallet stolen and needed to borrow a few dollars to phone Australia to get some money transferred. Unfortunately it sounded like the beginnings of some sort of con, so we symphasised with him then said we had no change!
Had dinner at a Thai restaurant before heading back to the hotel where Liz went for a swim while I wrapped some presents ready for tomorrow...
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