Weed in Phnom Penh

The hotel was great and it was also in a great location for some of Phnom Penh's sites of interest and restaurants & bars. A short stroll past the National Museum took us into a street full of restaurants, bars and ubiquitous tuk tuk drivers. As soon as tuk tuk driver sees a tourist anywhere he will ask them if they want a tuk tuk - every time, all the time. It was really quite irritating at first but we soon learned the best way to deal with it was to avoid any eye contact and just ignore them. Bless them, some of them would try so hard, come up claiming to be your brother, being curious ('where are you from') and even trying a little dance to impress.

As we looked for somewhere to eat on the first night a number of tuk tuk drivers touted for business and we politely declined and then one in a hushed voice said, "Do you want to buy some cannabis?" and showed us a little plastic bag full of green leaves! We left him as soon as we could!!

Dinner was a 'get to know our surroundings' type meal. We had left it until 8pm or so to eat and for many places in Cambodia this is late. some of the items we tried to order were not available and this was to prove the case in quite a few places we ate at in Cambodia. The food we had was tasty and well presented and looked far better than what we had seen at the bus stop place on the border earlier in the day.

As you might expect in a poor country, the street lighting and the lighting in the restaurants was generally low wattage so the streets were quite dark when we walked back towards the hotel. But despite this, we felt relatively safe walking the streets.

Very near the hotel we passed a friendly looking bar and were soon ushered in by a charming young man. We met some interesting people including a crazy Scot called Joe who had spent the last 11 months running a tourist boat service in the south of the country. He was a real hoot!

The bar was putting on a cabaret show but it did not start until 11pm and I was very tired so by 10:30 we said our good-byes and went back to the hotel

Despite the bed being made of concrete (with a real mattress on top of course!), I had a great night's sleep.