sunnynna

With River and Manish of to work and Tara at school, Shea and I had the day to ourselves. First on the agenda was a visit to the Central Market, a former bus station currently under renovation. We did a little shopping there but it was starting to get hot so we headed off to destination number 2, the National Museum (yes, another museum!). We chanced upon a couple of interesting art galleries nearby and visited them too. Shea shows considerable maturity in her interest in art and has acquired an appreciation for abstracts and was quite taken by paintings of the Bayon face adorned with shades and lipstick! The National Museum is housed in a beautiful red building and cost $3 each to get in. We watched an animation revealing life at Angkor during its ... read more

I bought my bus tickets to Phnom Penh through the hotel, we used the Mekong Express mainly because it had good reviews on the internet. The pick up was at 6:30 AM and the arrival in Phnom Penh around 1PM. The journey was long but comfortable, the road was narrow and we stopped for lunch. Shea and I wandered around the market and she managed to pick up a cool cap for $1, I was on the look out for the local delicacy, spider, but no luck, lots of other bugs but no spiders. The hotel had been very helpful in getting most of our transport needs. It helped that they always had a number of licensed tuk-tuk drivers available. They promised me a room with a balcony over the pool when I booked but when ... read more

The big one, started at 4:30AM, Teow was already waiting for us, the Angkor sunrise is very popular and it was great to be out before the sunrise, the air was very cool and on the tuk-tuk with the wind blowing it was almost chilly. On the way there we encountered a whole bunch of tuk-tuks making the same trip, Teow seemed to be doing his best to get us there before them and we overtook most of them. Still there were already quite a few people there when we got there, we got out our flashlights and started making our way to the temple, Shea enjoyed this part. Most people had gathered around the pond to catch the reflection on the surface when the sun comes up but seeing that we did have a bit ... read more

Day 1 Caught our 3:30 AM bus out of the Mor Chit Bus Station, tickets cost us 212 baht each. The seats were hard but the ride smooth and we dozed most of the way. Arrived at Aranyapatet just after 7:30AM and caught a tuk-tuk to the border (50 baht) and the confusion began. There aren’t any clear signs as to which way to go and a bunch of guys telling u different things. Good thing we already got our visas and didn’t have to deal with the visa scams. There were men trying to charge 20 baht to fill in departure cards, arrival cards and border passes, whatever it takes to make a buck I guess. Anyway, got through all of that, picked up a bottle of Penfolds Bin 8 for 400 baht (probably a ... read more

What do you do once unpacked and settled in shopping paradise? Well actually we rested and took it easy for a while and didn’t venture out till dinner time. Just watched T.V. and even had a bit of a nap, this was to be the pace of this trip really, instead of a mad rush to see everything and go everywhere we decided to do whatever we fancied at the time. So having rested we got a bit hungry and ventured out into the night and headed straight to the Temple Market. Comfort House turned out to be well located for our needs (even though I think they ripped us off on the pricing giving us the excuse that it was labor week-end and everything would be booked out with a large influx of Chinese tourist, ... read more