Chip Butties, Mushy Peas, and Bubble Tea OR ""Ä trip to Phnom Penh with the Brits""

A word of warning about a bus ride in Cambodia:

CAUTION! Karaoke songs in the television may be MORE ANNOYING after 6 hours than they appear. Precautionary ipod charging should be exercised.

ALSO: To all you Cambodian cows out there who may want to wander in front of our bus- WE WILL NOT STOP FOR YOU!!! We will blast our horn repeatedly and continue full speed ahead. At the last possible second we MAY slam on the brakes......but no promises.


...but it only costs $4 so how much can you really complain anyway? :)

Upon safe arrival (miraculously) without much road kill in our wake we arrived in Phom Penh and were promptly swarmed by what seemed like THOUSANDS of tuk tuk drivers. One even proceeded to follow us about 3 blocks and become very hostile that we weren't interested in his services.

3 guesthouse attempts later.... we settled on the Royal Guesthouse. (It's clean and $7/night if anyone is going to Phom Penh anytime soon)
* Rachel, I'm sorry I didnt tell you this at the time but there was a pretty good sized lizard outside the front of my door.....I figured ignorance is bliss.

There's really no nice way to lead into this but our visit to the Killing Fields and Tuel Sleng was horrific. At the killing fields there is a 17 story monument filled with 7,000 human skulls they've exhumed from the mass graves there and as you walk through the fields you can see fragments of bone and clothing still all over the ground. Tuel Sleng is even more gruesome , since most of the cells and "classrooms"are left pretty much as they were found by the invading Vietnamese.

Phnom Penh as a whole was really interesting- definitely more urban than Siem Reap in some ways but still a lot of slums and poverty. And here's a shout out to NYC traffic- Thank you for giving me pedestrian right of way!


Rachel, Leigh, Carmen and Lauren: Thanks for sharing 2 awesome weeks at ACODO and a crazy weekend in Phom Penh with us. You guys are "awesome".
Carmen, I think Chhai has a crush on you- he drew you two pictures yesterday and made me PROMISE to give them to you. So now yow have to meet us in Vietnam.
:)

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