STRANGE JOURNEY TO PHNOM PENH

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Our journey back to Phnom Penh was a little strange. We were put on a coach and taken to the bus station. As we were parked I looked at the coach next to us. “At least we’re not on that one” I said pointing to the bus parked next to us with huge cracks across the windscreen. I must have spoken too soon because as the words left my mouth we were moved from our perfectly good coach on to the one with the broken windscreen. Surely this couldn't be a good idea – the road to Phnom Penh could hardly be described as smooth. All we could do was hope that the windscreen would hold out for our journey.

There was a rather odd couple on the bus who had to sit in every seat before they picked one. We were all allocated seats on our tickets, but this didn't stop their goldilocks routine. The good news was that after all their swapping and changing they finally selected the seats behind ours – I'm sure you can imagine how pleased we were. They then proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes moving their massive luggage from one seat to another. The woman would move her bag to a seat, sit down for a while to look at it, then get up to move it to another seat repeating the whole strange process in some sort of OCD loop. Most of our luggage was in the main storage, but we had our small rucksacks with us. Normally these fit with no problems into the overhead storage – not this time. Whoever designed the bus made a slight oversight when it came to storage. The overhead storage was only 4 inches tall rendering it completely useless for the purpose it was intended . Our strange neighbours spent most of the journey complaining that the coach was not the luxury they had been expecting – clearly they had never experienced the joys of Vietnamese public transport!

Without a doubt the strangest thing of the whole journey was the choice of television entertainment. Most of the trip we were subjected to the love song music channel. Most of the videos were shot in the same location with men looking wistfully out to sea while remembering the good times they had spent there with a woman young enough to be their daughter. Just in case we felt the need to join in the words appeared at the bottom of the screen in a karaoke style.

For the remainder of the journey we watched a film. I say watched but the truth was we were mesmerised by it. The plot consisted of a man called Gay and his friend who were travelling sales men. They are desperate for the toilet so they make an unscheduled stop at a grand old mansion. A rather odd looking man answers the door who turns out to be a vampire. The two salesmen get trapped inside the house and spend the entire film running away from the vampire who wants to capture them so he van bite their bottoms!

The film was definitely enhanced by the subtitles – although sometimes the translations made less sense than the plot. There were one or two problems with our viewing comfort. Firstly the man in the seat in front of me had massive Elvis hair. When he fell asleep his head would move from side to side with each bump in the road, and his hair would totally block my view. Much worse than that was the strange couple behind us who couldn't sit still. For the entire journey we were subjected to the sound of their matching anoraks which rustled with every movement and bump in the road.

We finally arrived in Phnom Penh and found a friendly tuk tuk driver who introduced himself as Windy - I’m not sure if we heard him properly, but we liked the name so it stuck. He dropped us at our hotel and we made arrangements for him to pick us up in a couple of days to take us sightseeing.

After settling in the hotel we caught another tuk tuk to Alley cat café for dinner. We were served a burger fit for a King, but it was so big that all we wanted to do when we had finished was have a nap. We couldn't go straight to sleep as we were on the hunt for a better hotel. Phnom Penh does not have the best reputation and we weren’t entirely happy with the security in our hotel. We chose the hotel because we were told that we could put our valuables in a locked cupboard, but when we handed them the bag they put it behind the front desk in full view of everyone. They assured us that there was someone there 24 hours a day, but it didn’t look very secure so we ended up taking our valuables out with us. We knew that we would probably end up spending about a week in Phnom Penh, so carrying our valuables everywhere wasn’t an option. Luckily we found a hotel just around the corner with free lockers so we booked in for the following day.

After moving hotels we caught a taxi to the embassy only to find it was closed for lunch for 2 ½ hours. We should have learned a lesson from our experience with the Vietnamese embassy – they do love their long lunches! We had a rather long lunch ourselves before making sure we were back early in case there was a queue. We needn’t have worried as there was no one else at the embassy. The huge gates creaked open and the security guard waved us in. We were shown to a big office with loads of desks, but only one man was working and he looked rather surprised to see us.

We didn’t get the news we were hoping for. They must have been busier than they looked because our visa would take longer than expected and wouldn’t be ready before we were due to fly out. He did tell us we would have no problems getting our visa on arrival, which was some good news, but now we would end up spending a week in Phnom Penh for no reason.

After a little siesta we went somewhere local for dinner. We were finding Phnom Penh a little difficult to get around so local seemed like a good idea. There didn’t seem to be many distinct areas meaning that everything was spread out across the city. As with a lot of Asia, pathways are virtually none existent, walking even a short distance takes a long time because you are either dodging traffic or walking around roadside stalls, potholes,animals or sleeping people. A tuk tuk is really the only way to travel in Phnom Penh, but catching them every day can work out expensive for the budget conscious traveller.

We were sat at a table outside when a man wandered up to us and asked us if we would recommend the food, we said we would, and he walked inside and took a seat. We carried on with our meal and thought no more of it, but after a few minutes we could hear some shouting. We looked inside and saw the man who just spoke to us trying to start an argument with the staff. “what sort of place do you call this” he shouted “all I’m asking for is egg and bloody chips, what do you mean you cant do me egg and chips” He then started to harass a couple sat at another table, who did their best to ignore him. He shouted and swore with no regard for the small children who were trying to eat their dinner and then finally when he realised no one was listening he got up to leave. On his way out he stopped at our table “What do you think to that, they cant even cook egg and chips” he shouted at us. “ I think you should jog on” replied Andy. After contemplating what was just said for a while he finally wobbled away. “a very silly man” the waiter said as he cleared our plates – that’s putting it politely.

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