Day 113 – Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville to Koh Rong (or not).

The bus and boat we wanted weren’t available so we had to go for the next best option, which probably turned out to be the worst option! We were picked up at 8am for the 8.45 bus to Sihanoukville. The bus wasn’t the best and the aircon was terrible but it was better than nothing at all. We arrived at a café around 11.30am. Emily, Cara, Chrissy and I decided we’d just wait on the bus, the driver came on and told us we needed to get off so we asked him how long we were going to be here and he said 10minutes. A bit of time passed and we hit 45minutes since arriving so one of the girls from the bus decided to go and find him and ask. He said 3, she said 3 minutes? He said no, 3! 3 o’clock? He said no, 3 mountains. She walks back to us completely confused. We gave him 5 more minutes before walking over in a big group to get this sorted. His English was terrible and so he found a woman who could speak both languages to tell us what was going on. Apparently the electrics on the bus were broken and we were waiting for another one, obviously he never planned to tell us this and it was convenient we made it the whole way to the rest stop! We refused to buy anything in this place and eventually had a new bus with us at about 1.30!

We didn’t get to Sihanoukville until 5pm meaning we had missed the last boat to Koh Rong and had to stay a night on the mainland instead.

Once again the bus dropped us outside and we needed tuk tuks to get in. There were 11 of us by this point so we got a good deal and got them to take us to the only place we had heard of. Luckily Monkey republic had the exact amount of beds we needed. The room may have had no windows or air con and felt like a sauna but it was a bed for the night. We also rebooked our boat and sorted out our bus to go to Siem Reap, so although the day didn’t go to plan it worked out alright in the end.

Day 112 – Phnom Penh.

By the end of last night we had planned what we were going to do with our only day in Phnom Penh. Emily, Cara and the boys they had met throughout Vietnam planned to go to the killing fields and S21, so we decided to join them.

We all met around 10.30am for breakfast and then hopped in tuk tuks for our day out. We needed 3 all together to fit the 11 of us in. The roads in Cambodia are crazy, a lot of them are proper roads and are smooth to drive along but some of them are dirt tracks and you bounce around a lot!

Our first stop was at the Killing Fields and with our entrance fee we were given an audio tour headset. Choeung Ek is the most well known killing fields in Cambodia and is now a memorial site. The feature building is called the Stupa and contains the skulls and other items of all the people that were killed.

Pol Pot was the general secretary and leader of the Khmer Rouge. He took people from the city to the country to work on farms and killed off around 25% of the Cambodian population, so between 1 and 3 million people!

After here the boys being boys wanted to shoot some guns so we went to the shooting range for them to do that. We then made our way over to S21 also known as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. From 1975 – 1979 this place was used as a detention and torture centre, before that it was a school. The rooms were made into chambers to house the prisoners. The figures estimates 20,000 were killed over those 4 years. I haven’t spoken a lot about it because it was quite depressing to learn about but we all felt like we needed to know the history of the country we were visiting. The whole day was quite draining and sad to think that all of this happened not so long ago, not hundreds but only tens of years ago.

To cheer ourselves up we went out for a lovely meal and to the rooftop bar.

Day 111 – CAMBODIA BOUND, HCMC to Phnom Penh.

Our bus wasn’t until 1pm so we had the morning to do what we want. We didn’t really do a lot apart from eat breakfast in a cute little café around the corner. We got picked up at 12.30 and was taken about 100m down the road to be put on another bus, we could have easily walked but who can turn down a free pick up, especially when you don’t know where the bus goes from!

We went with Mekong Express who is supposed to be the best company. It cost us $13 each, we had wifi and a small snack. It was no Thai Airways but the journey was alright. They took our passports and we paid them $25 to sort out our visa, the border was smooth sailing and after hopping on and off the bus about 3 times in 5 minutes we were ready and had arrived in Cambodia.

The bus then stopped for a half an hour break, by this point or pretty much when any bus we’ve been on has stopped we’d rather it just carried on. Back on the bus we arrived in Cambodia about an hour and a half later than expected. Well… I say expected I mean the time we were told. As usual they drop you really far outside the town/city you want to go to so the tuk tuk drivers make money. We got in one and he wanted to charge us $15, I got him down to $10 and knew we were being over charged but we had no idea where we were, how much anything was worth and just wanted to get to our room and grab some dinner. It probably was about the 9km he said because it took us a good 20minutes to arrive at The Mad Monkey hostel.

Emily and Cara (the girls we had dinner with yesterday) arrived earlier than us so we got some dinner in the hostel restaurant and then went to the rooftop bar to meet them. It’s weird being here and mostly using American dollars for currency, but as they don’t use coins anything less than $1 you get in Cambodian money… so weird!