The 15th of November was another easy lazy day.
We took ourselves up to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, and then floated around writing and being slovenly until lunchtime. We may have watched TV; I can’t really recall. After that we took a bit of a stroll around the neighbourhood near the hotel and found a Cambodian restaurant where they served us some pretty tasty noodles. And they even had some idea what we were talking about when we explained that I didn’t want beef, pork, fish or chicken in mine.
‘Ah, vegetarian?’ the lady said.
‘Yes, yes, that one!’
And so forth. It was a tidy little restaurant as well, and the only other people there seemed to be locals which is usually either a blessing or a fatal curse. In this case it seemed a blessing, for our food came quickly and cheaply.
But of course while you are slogging your backpack around Sapa or freezing in Moscow or somewhere like that you can only dream of a day to yourself in a nice hotel room, where you can be warm and do very little. The only appropriate course of action seemed to be to make the most of what we’d been offered.
At ten to six we took ourselves downstairs from Room 504 to meet the new group and new guide for our Cambodia tour, of whom there were 12 persons in total. Alan and Elaine are a retired couple who married recently, were both born in England, moved to New Zealand in the early 80’s and now live in Nelson. In their words, this is literally ‘just over the hill’ from Takaka, where my grandmother lives. Then there are Mike and Helen, a British couple who seem to have travelled just about everywhere in the face of the earth. Then there is Louise (Lou) and Sheridan, one from London and the other from Canberra (via Sydney), who became friends on a trip through Africa three years ago and have since both visited each other in Australia and the UK.
Then there are the sole travellers; Kiel (A German name for an Englishman who has been living in Edinburgh for several years, normally referred to as ‘Kilo’). Amanda, who actually works for Intrepid but has never been on one of their trips until now. Ella, who used to work in Sales and Advertising but has recently moved to a new city in England. And finally, Jamie, who works for a bank in London and in the last few years has been to Nepal, Egypt and somewhere else I’ve forgotten.
Finally there is our guide, Nak. We weren’t sure if that would turn out to be a man or a woman; but a man it was – a 33 year old man who shortens his name from Bunnak. As soon as we’d gathered everyone we then took ourselves all the way back upstairs to the restaurant and meeting room on the 6th floor to do the paperwork and hear about the itinerary and do other official-type things. Nak started by telling us all about how he was born in 1975, which is Year Zero in Cambodia, doesn’t know his actual birthdate, and spent the first 10 years of his life in a refugee camp just over the Thai border. Saves us asking, I suppose.
We even got the itinerary printed out with the date for each day, which was nice. In the Trip Notes, because they run at different times, it only ever says ‘Day 1’, ‘Day 2’, and so on. Not that it takes long to add a date to those headings, but if someone else does it for you, so much the better. And we got the country information booklet which Intrepid does for each country, and those are always handy to have.
We agreed to re-congregate downstairs at 7.30pm to go out for dinner, by which time the storm which we could see coming all afternoon from up on the 5th floor had really kicked off. We had a black out for about 15 minutes; the rain was so loud you could hardly hear any thunder. It was impressive. Of course the rain didn’t stop just because we were getting in tuk-tuks to go down to the riverside for dinner; it might have even gotten heavier, but tuk-tuks are prepared for such things and simply fold down the flaps on the side and tie them to their frames.
What tuk-tuks are not really prepared for is how quickly all the streets and intersections fill up with water, but we made it through, despite being splashed by several cars driving through the puddles. The water came up so quickly from the gutters that in some streets vehicles were taking turn about to drive down the middle of the road.
Along the riverside there are lots and lots of restaurants, some horrifically touristy and others not so bad; we went to one called Veiyo Tonle (which I guess translates as ‘View of the Tonle’ or something like that). This restaurant supports a local orphanage and teaches orphans useful skills, gives them jobs, etc. There must have been more than one Intrepid group there though, because every bit of space they had was taken up with tables of people. Everyone sitting on one side of our table had a bit of difficulty even getting into their chairs, and no one could even contemplate getting up to go anywhere.
Not that they were going anywhere anyway; as per usual the food came quite slowly and person by person, but you get used to that eventually. Because it’s a bit of a lottery, sometimes your food will come first, and you won’t starve to death watching everyone else eat in the meantime. Of course it doesn’t help going in a group of 12 and all ordering at the same time…
For a very slight increase in the fee our tuk-tuks waited around and took us back to the hotel when we were finished, which was after 9pm, The streets had dried and we rolled past the ornate walls of the Royal Palace, which some people not staying around in Phnom Penh after the tour had gone to see that afternoon.
Tomorrow afternoon we were booked in to see what Cambodia is most famous for recently; one of the Khmer Rouge prisons and the Killing Fields. I wouldn’t say anyone in the group was really enthusiastic to see such things and couldn’t wait for it; but we all definitely wanted to see it.
Greg
