Phnom Penh or bust

Over the past couple of nights, we discussed our plans for getting back to Bangkok. I'm the one leaving first--Augie's staying an extra week--and I'm flying back from Bangkok, so I need to be back there Monday morning. Fun as it was to be ripped off by immigration services and sketched out by bullying long-fingernailed motorcyclists, we didn't want to go back via Aranyaprathet. So we sniffed around and decided to check out going back via Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

This morning, we got up and out at 8 to check on a bus to the capital. For $8 apiece, we could catch the 9:30 bus. Lada ordered some breakfast to go while Augie and I handled checkout at the guest house.

We got on a big charter bus that was half full. The ride took 5 1/2 hours, but it was on mostly good roads, and we had some wonderfully strange videos to watch. First was a series of videos you see at karaoke bars--the ones with the lyrics on the bottom with a backdrop of cheesy drama scenes. After that, we watched Tom-Yum-Goong, a Thai martial arts movie where the main character tries to save an elephant from gangsters. I'm sure there was more to the movie than that, but Lada wasn't feeling good, so she couldn't translate the Thai for Augie and me.

We made one twenty-minute stop in a town whose name I didn't catch. There were food stands set up at the bus stop, including roasted crickets.

The bus arrived in Phnom Penh at 2:40ish. Augie and Lada had used Lonely Planet to find a guest house for us. We took a tuktuk to the National Museum for $2, and easily found the Bright Lotus Guest House. Rooms are $16 a night, and the location is awesome: two blocks from the Tonlé Sap, which drains into the Mekong nearby. It's also right across from the Royal Palace.

We dropped off our stuff, freshened up, and booked our flights from Phnom Penh to Bangkok for $97 per person. That done, we tuktuked to the post office and mailed some postcards. From there we strolled to the Tonlé Sap waterfront and snacked at a pricey restaurant. We tried to find the Central Market, and succeeded... right as they were closing.

Discouraged but not defeated, we walked on to a nearby mall, and went to the top for a view of the city. We were just in time to see a thunderstorm roll in, and decided to do dinner at the sukiyaki restaurant at the top of the mall.

We took a tuktuk back in a downpour. I traded rooms with Augie and Lada, but I can't remember why. We chilled out for a while, and Augie and I went out for beers.

Sitting at an outside table on the sidewalk a block up from the guest house, we were waylaid by street hawkers. These were selling books, and Augie agreed to buy the Lonely Planet for Thailand if the girl could find one. She darted off and came back twenty minutes later with one.

Surrounded by an awesome lightning storm, Augie and I talked a lot about all kinds of random stuff. Chilling out like that is one of the things I miss most about college. At one point, we noticed a rat scampering around the sidewalk. Soon afterwards, we called it a night. I was in bed by 11.