Day 288: Phnom Penh again

In the morning, we finished packing and took our bags downstairs, checked out and had a quick breakfast. 'Our' tuk-tuk driver then took us back to the bus station, where our bus was already ready and waiting. The journey back to Phnom Penh passed largely without incident. The one thing that stands out from the journey, however, was the realisation that I made towards the end that virtually all of the houses that we passed had strange little effigies out the front – human figures made by stuffing something into a shirt and pants and then sticking some sort of head on top. There was something slightly creepy and Blair Witch about the whole thing – and I never did find out what they represented (although I did see them elsewhere in Cambodia). 

When we arrived in Phnom Penh we were met by two tuk-tuk drivers, ready to take us to our hostel – a different one this time as Kate was bitten by bedbugs in our last one. First, however, we made a quick visit to a different bus company office to buy some coach tickets for our next leg – to a little roadside village from which we would get a boat to a little riverside village in the Cardamom Mountains. When we go the hostel, the room we were shown to was very basic – a concrete floor, ceiling fans, air con, a bathroom with no hooks or mirror. It had obviously originally been built for a different purpose as it had huge plate-glass windows that looked out onto the central corridor, so you felt a little bit like a zoo exhibit if you left the blinds open. Another huge window that looked out onto the bar area had been covered over with blackout paint. The hostel had a nice balcony area upstairs but unfortunately it had done nothing with it. 

After dropping off our bags we went for a walk around the area looking for somewhere to have a beer and a snack – passing a group of barbers working on the street who hailed me and offered to give me a trim. Our meanderings eventually brought us to a little place on a street corner not from the hostel, where we ordered a plate of chips and a jug of beer, and played several hands of rummy (and marvelled once again at the incredibly profusion of black wires strung between the telegraph poles along the street – a Southeast Asian phenomenon that never ceases to amaze me). 

We then walked around some more, looking for somewhere to have dinner, coming across a young Frenchman selling crepes from a little cart on another street corner. We ordered a few crepes for the girls and stood and talked to him as he prepared them. He had been travelling for about a year, slowly making his way around Asia as the mood took him, and we tortured him by describing our own travels in France and the things we will most miss about having France on our doorstep (which of course were the things he most missed about being in France). Nothing leapt out at us, restaurant-wise, so we went back to our corner restaurant and ate there.