From Siem Riep to Phnom Penh

April 6

Another early morning rolls around and we are up at dawn to prepare for our departure from Siem Riep.  Today we are heading to Phnom Penh and will look forward to spending the better part of the day in a bus.  We looked into a boat trip, which we would have preferred, but the Mekong River is so low as this is the very end of the dry season that larger boats cannot navigate the river very well….so we will travel by bus.  We get down to the breakfast table and have a friendly visitor from the previous evening.  The waiter that has taken a great interest in our family has made a folded origami picture frame for Annie.  It is amazingly intricate and made out of Cambodian money.  We are quite surprised and it seems that he has shown up just to give this to us before we leave.  We are so humbled that he would do this for her and are very appreciative. Shortly after breakfast, we wait for our minibus to take us to the larger bus on which we will ride for the next 6+ hours.  There are no glitches and we are soon settled into our seats and on the open road.  The view from the bus is amazing.  The country is totally flat and vast.  We pass mostly very dry fields or we will go by small villages where the families are drying chilis or fish in the front yard.  We stop for lunch in a small town called Khampong Thom and have a really nice lunch before returning to the bus for another long haul.  Once we arrive in Phnom Penh, we are immediately assaulted by the usual suspects….tuk tuk drivers!  We settle on two drivers that will caravan us to our hotel for a whole $5 between the two of them.  Our hotel is more of a guesthouse and it comprised of three stories.  The room we reserved is not in good order, so we are moved to two balcony rooms that are quite adequate for our short stay.  Annie, Sam, Paulie and I walk around the neighborhood for a little while before returning to the hotel to have dinner.  We find a shop selling DVD’s and we cannot stand not to pick up a couple.  Seems like it has been forever since we just had a movie night.  We eat pizza for a change and then all pile into bed for a showing of “The Killing Fields” as research for our next adventure.