Phnom Penh Part 2..

Cambodia is, or could be a really majestic place. The scenery is like the carribbean and there are temples and amazing buildings everywhere you look, not at all as we expected.

Anyway a couple of hours later we arrive at the tour office and take a tuk tuk to the hotel we had reserved.

After the arguments of using "the force" last time to find a room, we decided to book in advance. Obviously this time it would be fine............

So after going round the block for the 3rd time we lost patience with mr tuk tuk and decided as there were loads of hotel signs we would find somewhere else.

One hour, one mile and a domestic later i pay another tuk tuk driver to take us to yet another wrong hotel, and eventually the right one which i refuse to stay in because it is disgusting and the sheets are dirty.

After Jonnie has me by the throat and says he will take the room with cockroaches, because he is tired and wants a beer, i decide to book in.

As you will remember from the border and happy hour incident we have a dollar between us now old ali akhbar the owner wants paying for his excuse of a toilet/room.

Tired, hot, sweaty and under duress from jonnie with his eyes now glazed over with the "i want beer now" look, i ask for directions to the nearest ATM.

It was probably at this point that Ali Ahkbar remembered me throwing the pillows on the bed saying "i am not staying here it is a sH*t hole" and directed us a mile in the wrong direction.

Now we are both super angry and upon returning i throw my passport at mr Akhbar and tell him money tomorrow take it or leave it. He took it, but we were starving so off we go for Atm search number 2.

Jonnie used the force and found one in what looked like the reception of an embassy.

'remember to carry lots of small bills' we remembered as the cash machine spat out a single hundred dollar bill. we did not even know they did a hundred dollar bill!!

great!

So another mile walk and we end up by the river, and finally get a beer and a bit of grub. we had been up since 5 am and it was now midnight.

welcome to cambodia.

New day new luck we thought as we gave 2 fingers to mr Akhbar and went to a starbucks for a decent coffee...

No it was local gangster central and as we sat down the music stopped playing.

Top tip, just because a shop has a sign with a coffee cup on it, it does not mean it is a starbucks, particularly when you realise it is in a well dodgy back street.

well apart from the dirty looks, the coffee tasted like it had come from a sperm factory, and also the bill was in vietnamese dongs.

Being the seasoned travellers that we are, we realised that A) we had no dongs, B) we did not have a clue what the exchange rate was. So after Cambodias most expensive cup of warm sperm we head off to use the trusty force to find us a nice hotel.

Leave it me i say, as i flag down a tuk tuk and command him to drive us the full length of the river and down to the area where "Rory's" hostel had received rave reviews. With even greater authority i negotiate the rate of one dollar as well. Who is your daddy!?

a couple of minutes later jonnie enquired as to why we we had pulled up outside the post office......

anyway (no comment) we eventually make it to Rory"s and decide to have a sandwhich and jonnie starts kicking off that it is an Irish bar as he looks around at all the memorabilia on the walls.

"you don't say?" i said. and there was me thinking that the leprachauns on the advert and the typical Cambodian name might have been a bit of a clue...

And then a cold chill hit the both of us as the harsh reality of what we had walked in to hit us............. loads of ex pats that need mental help, skinny men that can't get clothes to fit them, and fat hairy birds that want to go on marches at the age of 18 because they have got nothing better to do....over opinionated, jumped up and all sat reading lonely planet with a bottle of water....

yes we had stumbled in to backbacker central

"are the chips (you know the ones in a different country) cooked in rapeseed oil or low fat? and could i have the butter seperate? and could i not have mayonnaise in the tuna and mayonnaise?, oh and is it caught by line or trawled, as i don't think it's fair it should die in pain.."

oh yes, that's what they are like. Jonnie just happened to glance round and catch the eye of a girl not even he would tackle before 10 pints of power drinking, and she tutted, looked away disgusted, and pulled her top up a bit, as obviously jonnie was perving at her and mentally undressing her (she still managed to keep reading her book though).

well that was the final straw, and all the veins burst on his sweaty head, so as i dragged him back in to the chair spitting, we decided not to stay at Rory's and left.

Luckily we found a really nice hotel down an alley, so went out and celebrated and got hammered.

we upped the ante a bit and started going in to the establishments that you could not look in to from the outside, and at one point we were sure we had found mr Glitter's old drinking hole, due to the questionable age of the girls there. So we were straight out of there, after a couple of hours anyway.

Managed to find a sort of rock bar that was really good, and the rest is history shall i say.

More or less the same for the next day, ended up at a club called Martini's which was awful. Jonnie got talking to a girl in the dark, and when she went up to go loo, all i can say was it was like one of those emails where you watch the car going along the mountain road, and then a skeleton jumps out on the screen and screams and scares the hell out of you, well i think you get my drift.

so we decided to call it a day and booked a coach to the north of Cambodia to a place called Siem Reep, which is close to the Temples of Angkar Wat, which were one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world.

next installment.........the road of hell