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Day 18 - Heading for home day.

One last buffet breakfast (mini-croissants were fresh and warm and many were had). Time for one last walk, where Kitherine brought some socks from a street vendor and then it was on the bus to the airport for a flight back to Vietnam and Saigon airport and a seven hour layover before our flight to Sydney is scheduled to leave at 9.30pm. Turns out scheduled is just a word and Vietnam Airlines really outdid themselves tonight with maintaining their 100% record of flights NOT leaving on time. We were delayed 20 minutes leaving Sydney and every internal flight we have had has been delayed 10 to 20 minutes. We were all lined up at 8.30pm to board the plane when the dreaded scrolling text appeared at the bottom of the departure screen saying our flight has been delayed due to technical problems. A hand written board was supplied and our flight will now leave at 1.05am - I am intrigued to know how they can be sure that extra 5 minutes will definitely be required. So it gives me a bit of blogging time - I am writing this at 10.07pm. Let’s see what the (early) morning brings! Hopefully a large carbon fibre and metal bird carrying us back to Sydney…

Kitherine’s sock vendor lady looked pleased with the sale.

Kitherine looks pleased with her purchase! (Zoom in the read the charming Vietglish blurb about some very special socks).

The Krud bus! Krud is a local brand of beer and the subject of many jokes from travelling English speakers here.

A view of people delayed in transit to Sydney…

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DAY 17 - Last full day of the holiday…

Well, it’s that time of the trip again. A free day in Phnom Penh this time. The six of us spent it on one last pedestrian trek battling with footpaths used for everything EXCEPT foot traffic. We headed to the river and sort of got there, but it was hot and we seemed to have hit the river at a point where a lot of construction projects were either planned (and hence were either abandoned buildings or vacant lots) or underway with the associated construction traffic. We headed away from there and Paul and the Carlyles headed to the new favourite cafe called Temple for lunch, while Kitherine, Sharon and I headed for the bike shop district in the hope of purchasing some souvenir cycling jerseys. I call it the bike shop district because when you do a Google Maps search of ‘bike stores’ they mostly all come up in one locality. There was a bike shop near our hotel called ‘Cambodian Cycling Boutique’ and in our investigations there, we found that in addition to the norm of everything being priced in US dollars, they were also US prices - jerseys were $100.00 and were not Cambodian specific and bike shoes were $500.00! So, in our trek this time, we discovered a lot of the bike shops were just local mechanics shops selling cheap shopping style and kids bikes, the actual Trek shop was priced as though it was in the US and the Merida shop was gone. We headed to ‘Orange Cycles’ and found what we wanted, a selection of Cambodian themed jerseys for $25.00 each. Kitherine and I each bought one and the very friendly proprietor gave us a shop T Shirt (fortunately in my size) as a free present. He must have thought ‘Sheesh! These crazy westerners just gave me $50.00 for shirts that are far too big for locals and I thought I’d never sell!’. Our purchases might have put him in profit for the whole day! He might get some return business as I wore the shirt around the hotel and a fellow German guest (also a cyclist) asked me where I got it. There might be a made of crazy westerners beating a path to Orange Cycles door! The rest of the afternoon was spent back at the hotel mostly in the pool or hanging around the pool deck, then it was the tour farewell dinner in the hotel and that was it.

A grand promenade encountered during our walk.

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Well, there goes my attempt to sell Kitherine into slavery…

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Day 16 - Phnom Penh

Well, I just realised I haven’t really said anything about the other 17 people on our tour group who are neither Kitherine, nor me, nor Paul and Sharon nor those loveable Carlyles. All Aussies our age and older - a couple of sisters from Shepparton straight out of the Granny mould (and the same age) and are great fun. The rest are made up of other married couples with the exception of the odd one out to make the odd number of 23. This oddity is Jeff and I have used the word odd because he seems to live down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and conversations with him invariably take a strange turn away from where you thought the conversation was heading into something from cloud cuckoo land. Most of the other people seem to have been brought up on the theory the word ‘exercise’ is actually two four letter words and hence is the be avoided. Five of these are chain smokers so the bus rides invariably have an aural soundtrack of hacking coughs as well as the chorus of ‘How far do we have to walk?!! I’m not f#%king doing that!’. They do a lot of whinging over relatively minor physical activity - but you can’t chose who you tour with - other than the six of us.

We are, of course, only one of many tour groups here, so we see many other groups staying at the same hotels. There are many German groups here, British as well and some French. The Germans seem to be determined to conform to a stereotype as they are mostly all very fat and take over the hotel. This hotel has a roof pool, and when we have been up there to check it out it was full of Germans straining the sun lounges to their absolute limit. And you should see them at breakfast! Since the Carlyles and Paul and Sharon (particularly!) like a good sleep in, we are invariably first of our group to breakfast. Below is a copy of the report from the frontline I sent to our mates warning them of the conditions in the breakfast room

“Just to give you an update on life at the front (of the breakfast buffet). The Germans attacked early and surrounded the egg and coffee strategic positions and sent continual reinforcements. Crucially, they left the pancakes unprotected and I was able to perform a raid and emerge relatively unscathed. The British attacked the hot food tureens and seemed intent on using the ‘scorched earth’ technique - they left nothing. Cereals were seen as important heritage artefacts and were left untouched, but surrounded by the coffee attackers so no one could get to them. Fruit was ransacked by all - except for the dragonfruit for some reason… and then, despite the intensity of the onslaught, a strategic withdrawal (presumably to the pool deck) occurred and a temporary ceasefire has been declared”.

Well, now I have got that off my chest, onto today’s events. This was an organised tour day, so it was onto the bus and first stop was the royal palace. Just to fill you in, Cambodia has always had a royal family, but the genocidal Pol Pot regime from 1975 to 1979 meant the royal family was in exile, and did not return until 1991, when Cambodia became a constitutional monarchy. The current king was in exile in France where he was a ballet dancer - and, no, I am not making this up. He is now 70 years old and lives in the royal palace with his 90 year old mother and has never married and has no direct heirs. His successor will have to be found from the royal relatives - the king can either nominate a successor or the relatives can hold a ballot amongst themselves to chose a successor. Perhaps I am reading between the lines a bit, but I rather think that an ex-ballet dancer ‘confirmed bachelor’ who still lives at home with his mum might be partial to a few show tunes, don’t you think?

Anyway, I mention all this because his digs were the first stop on our tour today. From there, we went to the Central Markets and then, in a slightly disturbing choice, to the city genocide museum. There is no escaping the evil murderous hand of Pol Pot in this country - and this is how they address it. The museum is in a former torture and execution camp in the middle of Phnom Penh that was formerly a school. Apparently the Khmer Rouge set up 167 of these camps all over the country. It is genuinely horrifying and distressing to view so no description will be forthcoming - the only takeaway is that you can never underestimate how low the evil human beings in a mob rule situation can stoop to. This was Cambodians killing fellow Cambodians for no valid reason at all.

Well, the brighten the mood a bit, the Carlyles and us took a Tuk Tuk down to the river to go on a Mekong sunset river cruise - and it was tremendous. A very well spent $5USD. Then it was a nighttime Tuk Tuk ride back to our hotel, dinner around the pool on the 10th floor and some blog writing. And that brings us up to date. Last full day tomorrow before we fly home.

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The entry to the Royal Palace

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A view of the Throne room and associated buildings. All the brightly coloured building are of a traditional Cambodian architectural style. The grey painted building was a gift from Napoleon III of France - it is French in style, so it has been painted a dull colour so as not to try and upstage the local stuff

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More views inside the palace grounds

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The Central Market. Our only purchase was a coconut drink each, but the building was the star. Looked like you could buy a wide variety of goods here - would sir like a watch or perhaps a trussed up crab to take home to cook up for dinner?

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Sunset on the Mekong.

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Onto the Tuk Tuk and away from the river into the crazy traffic of Phnom Penh.

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Day 15 - Siem Reap to Phnom Penh by bus.

Well, we left the surrounds of Angkor Wat to travel to the capital. The countryside is very flat - no terrain available for hill repeats for any keen cyclists. We had three stops along the way - at the oldest bridge in Cambodia, at a local sculptors business and at a cafe rest stop where a variety of local produce was on display (which included deep fried tarantula spiders and cooked silkworms). We restricted our culinary experience to sticky rice rolls and dried fruit and vegetable chips. I did wonder if you could put the tarantulas into some very small hamburgers - then you would have some spider sliders!

Then it was back into the bus and along the Cambodian equivalent of Parramatta Road (lots of car and motorcycle and mechanics shops) into the capital itself and into a very fine hotel.

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Just an aggressive local statue carved by local sculptors on the way to Phnom Penh

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The bus stopped at the oldest bridge in Cambodia - built in the 12th century.

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Just the view from the bus - flat and plenty of rice paddies, but it is a foreign country out there, so it sets the scene a bit.

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Our hotel room in Phnom Penh - 8th floor corner suite!

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Michelle helpfully pointing out balls the sculptor had to make this artwork realistic…

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Katherine had to have a photo next to something saying ‘KB World Class Quality’ didn’t she?