Bus to Phnom Penh

We woke up at 8:00am so that we would have time to pack, eat breakfast and be ready for our bus pickup at 8:45am. Luckily they were a little bit late picking us up so we were down in the lobby ready and waiting when they arrived. Jessica and Alyssa had both purchased some of the local style pants and decided to wear them for the bus ride.

The bus ride to Phnom Penh was seven hours and since we had done that exact drive on our way to Siem Reap from Vietnam, we knew what to expect. Jessica and Alyssa tried to sleep on the bus, while I was trying to get some things done (upload pictures, write emails, etc).
When we arrived in Siem Reap, we checked into the "Mad Monkey" hostel. They showed us to our room on the fourth floor. It is always a challenge to climb flights of stairs with our heavy bags, but these stairs were particularly thin and slippery. When we got to the third floor, we had to pass through the bar to another staircase. It basically looked like we were in a loft room above the bar which I was adamantly going to object to if that was the case. Luckily, they had added an entire floor on above the bar, so we were pretty far back from it and the noise didn't disturb us. We dropped off our bags and went down to the bar to enjoy the free beer that the hostel provided us for staying with them. It was a nice bar with a good view of the surrounding city.

Since it was Jessica's last night in Cambodia, we decided we should have authentic Cambodian food for dinner. We looked up reviews for a place called "Sovanna" that was supposed to have great Khmer BBQ. One of the guys who worked at the hostel gave us directions so we were able to find it on foot. We did get many warnings against taking our purses with us however- apparently motorcycle thieves are always driving by snatching women's purses off their arms.

When we arrived at the restaurant, we were confused on how to order. Six women representing different beer companies barraged us and tried to get us to order their beer. We were overwhelmed so we ordered no beer, despite the fact that we wanted one. Our waiter finally called over someone who spoke English so that they could explain some of the dishes to us and help us order beer in a calmer manner. We got a few different dishes so we could try a variety, but unfortunately we didn't like anything them. We were disappointed but glad that at least now we knew we didn't like the traditional food.

Since we were so disappointed with dinner, we took a tuk tuk down to the waterfront street in search of dessert. We perused the different stores before settling on Dairy Queen because then, we would at least know what we were getting. We each got a blizzard and ate it while we watched the traffic passing by in front of the river.

Posted with Blogsy