day 283, Phnom Penh

Snuck in a couple of jobs in the morning before the bus, got some water and a new headset for skype and a sd card reader as my one is fucked, before rushing to catch the bus down the road onward to Phnom Penh! Michael was emailing back a couple who showed interest in the motorbikes, sods law. The bus was really nice, air conditioned and with nice people running it who spoke good English. They handed out visa forms for Cambodia and drove the 2 hour to the border. They took care of everything, we just waited in a room for our names to be called with all the exit stamps, I was relieved to get out of Vietnam, a tiny, tiny paranoid part of me was turning over the boom pole/the collision with that girl/the truck in my mind, but I was out! The Cambodian visa was really easy, they took care of everything and we were away. Funnily enough the border at Cambodian side was a lot more complex then Vietnam, they took our finger prints and everything. Back on the bus and my first impressions of Cambodia is that of casinos, they were lining the streets, turns out Vietnamese on the weekends come to Cambodia to gamble as it’s illegal in Vietnam. We stopped off for lunch which was very average, had some Khmer Noodles and a delicious coffee before carrying on. It was a 3 hour drive to PP and they put Fast and Furious Five on, with the Rock! I put my ipod in and looked out the window instead, then we drove onto a ferry and crossed another part of the Mekong (randomly I found out that from 2015 there will be a bridge built so the ferry will be redundant, at 2008m it will be Cambodia’s biggest bridge and will be a ‘gift’ from China…) We arrived in PP and it was hot, the streets are grid numbered so we walked to street 88 and found our hostel of choice. Checked in and met a danish girl called Sophie, she was going down to the pool so joined her, didn’t swim as my foot has gone a bit scabby so read my book (just started on 1984) before heading in a nauseating tuk tuk to the night market, had some street food on rugs on the floor and looked a bit half heartedly for some shoes. We walked back and chilled out in the evening, tried calling home but didn’t have any luck so went to the common area, which is also a sort of pub thing, sat on my own away from lots of people socialising and drinking,  watched the England france rugby game and had a blast, was marvellous.