On my last day in Siem Riep I didn't do anything particularly special. I was pretty tired from temple hopping the previous day and I really didn't feel like seeing any more temples. I slept in, walked around the town during the day, relaxed back at the hotel in the afternoon, went out again in the evening, then had an early night. Here are some of the things I saw:



This scene needs a bit of explaining. When I was coming back from Angkor Wat the previous day I saw something photo worthy, but I didn't have my camera ready. There is a river that runs through the middle of the town. At the top of the river, just before it enters the main part of the town, there is a net that stretches from one bank to the other. The purpose of the net is to collect all the trash that floats down the river before it gets to the area where all the tourists are. Yesterday, when I passed, I saw a few things bobbing around in the trash that I thought might have been animals. When I looked more closely I saw that they were actually little kids, swimming around in the trash looking for things they could take back to their family for reuse. It was a pretty sad sight. If people can get diseases from playing around in Gardiner's Creek, then I'm pretty sure these kids can get sick from swimming around collecting trash in a dirty Cambodian river. When I took this picture, there were no kids, but you can get the idea.

There is one small area in the centre of town that is actually quite clean and well maintained. There are parks and gardens, and even some flower beds. It has a kind of colonial atmosphere, similar to many other cities in this part of the world.


"Clean our water river". Is that an order?




Shopping in the centre of town. The dirt roads give it a real outback/western feel.


Traffic here is not as bad as Vietnam (as I will explain later), but it is still very chaotic. The simple rules are that the big vehicles have right of way over smaller vehicles, and that any time you are entering an intersection or passing a car you should beep the horn as many times as you can. Apart from that, it's a free for all.


Like most SE Asian coutnries, there are dogs and cats all over the place.

Apparently, a lot of the kids don't go to school or only go occassionally. But there are quite a few schools around. This was one of the better looking ones. Some kids were arriving at school as I passed by and a group of them said "Hello!" and smiled at me as if it was a perfectly natural thing to see a foreigner walking around taking pictures. In Japan, if I had walked past a school there would have been giggles and kids running away, and maybe, if I was lucky, one or two hellos.


The main market in town. A hot, stinky market selling goods for the locals. I wish I had a market like this near where I live. For a couple of dollars, I could get enough fruit and veges to last a week. Instead, I have to make do with $5 apples.

I picked a restaurant at random for lunch and ended up ordering fish and chips. It wasn't as good as Frank's, but it was passable. As I was eating this tiny little kitten came up and started laying with my shoes.

Soon, one cat became two.

On the way back to my hotel, I strolled along the river.

Here's something that you see all over Cambodia and Vietnam - streetside stalls selling petrol in soft drink or whisky bottles. I guess it's a convenient way of getting petrol. If you want 1 litre, you get the 1 litre bottle. If you want 2, you get the 2 litre bottle. I'm not sure I'd want to put that petrol in my car though.

I met some monks, and like all young people in Cambodia they smiled and said hello.

I went out again for dinner and went to the market to pick up a copy of Lonely Planet Cambodia (and by copy, I mean "copy"). I probably should have got one earlier, but everything I needed to know I had found on the internet. Note for travellers #1: wikitravel is an awesome site for planning a trip. It has just about everything you need to know for all major destinations and it's constantly updated. Note for travellers #2: If you really need a travel guide for Cambodia or Vietnam, get one when you arrive. There are people all over the place selling copies for just a couple of dollars.

The next day I woke up early to catch a bus from Siem Riep to Phnom Penh. I had bought a ticket the day before, and the bus company was sending a shuttle bus to pick me up and take me to the bus station. It was supposed to arrive at about 8:00am, so I was waiting from about 7:50. The shuttle bus came at around 8:20, but I wasn't too annoyed as I got to spend half an hour being entertained by the half naked little girl that runs around the hotel. I got on the bus, which was empty, and we then went to another four or five hotels to pick up more passengers. At the first hotel we stopped at a Japanese family got on. A man, woman and two teenage sons. This family became known to me as 'the stalker family', as I will explain later.

The bus company had stressed one point when I bought the ticket - be ready to get on the bus at the time you are told because we won't wait for you. At one hotel we went to there were bags out the front, but no people. The guy from the bus company who was organising things on the shuttle bus got off, looked around, got back on and told the driver to go. I guess someone missed their bus because they weren't ready on time.

After driving around most of Siem Riep picking up passengers, we finally arrived at the bus station and were shuttled straight on to the highway bus. About half the passengers were tourists, and the other half (the half that had been waiting patiently for out shuttle bus to arrive) were Cambodians. I had a seat next to an old Cambodian lady. She seemed nice, we had a few of those funny attempts at conversation where neither of us can speak the other's language, and she gave me some snacks to eat (something kind of like that sugary, fried bread French thing - I can't remember what it's called). In return, she spent half the trip sleeping with her legs resting on mine and her head on my shoulder. Hmm.

About half way to Phnom Penh we stopped for a lunch/toilet break. I didn't feel like a sit down lunch so I made do with some mango from a street stall and took a walk around the area. I walked through one of the stinkiest markets I've ever been to.


I then waited by the bus and had a chat with a couple of other passengers, all the time being asked for money by one legged beggars.


One thing I do remember well is watching a naked (as usual) baby sitting on kind of trolley/bicycle that the mother was using for shopping. That bike must have tasted good, because the kid wouldn't stop sucking on the handlebars. The mum tried to make the baby stop a few times, then just gave up and let it suck away.

The bus ride from Siem Riep was long but enjoyable as I got to see a lot more of Cambodia. Cambodia really is a different country from any other I have been to. It's poor, very poor, and its easy to see as you drive around. There are farms all over the places that don't seem to be growing anything. The few farms that have animals usually only have one or two, maybe a cow or an ox, and the animals are so underfed that you can see their bones through their skin. One interesting thing I noticed was that there are elaborate gates and fences all over the country, gates and fences that seem to be guarding nothing except empty land. It's as if a whole lot of people have bought property, then spent all their money on a gate and not been able to afford a house. There are also political buildings everywhere, mostly just regular houses with a sign saying "xxx people's party", "xxx governmental party" or things like that.

Riding in the bus was pretty crazy too. The extremely loud horn goes off every 10 seconds or so, which makes it very hard to sleep. The road is paved all the way to Phnom Penh, but at many places it isn't really wide enough for two large vehicles to pass. The bus driver blows his horn to let people know a bus is coming through and they should get out of the way. And they should. Because when you've got six people crammed on to a tiny little motorbike, you probably don't want to be hit by a bus doing 100km/h.

So, some time in the afternoon I arrived in Phnom Penh.