Siem reap or bust.

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Februrary 6th

On the road again.

Today we woke up, had some delicious baguettes across the street from our hotel, and then bit farewell to phnom pehn. I can't say i'm going to miss it that much.

Last night we hopped on a tuktuk to street 51, to the Zeppelin cafe. A cute little pub with a Dj standing in front of over 1000 records. The music was good, mostly early punk like the stooges and motorhead. We had some spring rolls and some dumplings, both of which were very tasty. After a couple drinks we were pretty much finished. So we headed back to the hotel and watched deuce bigalow europeen giggalo, pretty awful.

Anyhow, now we're sitting on a bus, on our way to siem reap. We've been on the road for 4 or 5 hours and i'm pretty sure we just hit a cow. and then drove away. Cambodian hit and run.

We should arrive just shortly after 6 at the guesthouse we booked through the place we bought our bus tickets from. The brochure they showed us looked nice. So heres hoping it lives up to the hype.

Tomorrow we'll have our first day at angkor wat. I'm really excited. I've wanted to see this series of temples pretty much since I first saw them on TV. My camera battery is charged and ready to go.

...heres later in the evening...

Well we've arrived in siem reap and seem to be enjoying it much more than phnom pehn. The people smile more and aside from the usual "Tuk-tuk" touts, its really not too bad.
We had a delicious dinner at a restaurant up the block from our hotel, jenn had some sort of noodle dish and I had lemon pork that was just out of this world good. The waiter offered us drugs. It took a while to figure out through his thick accent that he was saying "Ice" like pcp or whatever. I thought he was saying "nice" and it was overall very confusing. And no, we didn't purchase any of the drugs he offered.

Since then, I've been offered drugs by at least half a dozen other people. If i wanted drugs, I certainly could find them here...

Money here is interesting. Prices are sometimes in american dollars, sometimes in riel (4000 per dollar) there don't appear to be any coins in circulation, only bills. If you buy something for say $2.50, and you give them a $5, you'll probably get back 2 dollar bills, and some combination of 500 and 1000 riel bills equalling 2000. gets confusing in a hurry. I haven't seen anything smaller than a 500 riel bill yet. It sure makes me feel rich to have like 20000 of anything.

Our hotel is quite beautiful, with lots of dark wood, and high ceilings. We're on the top floor of a 4 story walk up, but from the sounds of it, its nothign compared to the stairs we'll be climbing at angkor.

We're paying $15 dollars a night for what would in winnipeg probably be a $200 a night room. Although, in all fairness, winnipeg hotel hallways dont have giant spiders living on the ceiling and bathrooms are alot cleaner. Otherwise, this place is pretty awesome. AC, fridge, big window overlooking the street. Can't ask for much more really.

Picasaweb for me pictures.

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