After the hard hitting day yesterday we decided today for a much more light hearted affair. The night sleep was again erratic due the temperature of the room but we had survived. We freshened up and had some breakfast from the hotel, I had fried egg on toast which is always good! We managed to hand in our washing as well because as you can imagine things do get a little smelly in this heat! we left our hotel into the heat of the morning and walked down the riverside towards the grand palace. Due to the recent death of the king the palace has only recently started to reopen but only in the afternoons at present. We had a look from the outside and decided to carry on south. It does get a little frustrating as every five seconds you are approached by a tuk tuk driver asking to take you somewhere. I would say its worse than India for this and is relentless all day!! We walked past the Cambodia Vietnam monument which was erected in honour of the Vietnamese who liberated the country in 1979 of the infamous Khmer Rouge regime as you would know from yesterday. We strolled past the Independence monument in the main square and took a turn northwards towards home. It was getting quite warm now so we thought it was time for another cheap beer!!

We turned into a small street which seemed littered with bars and restaurants. Laura spotted a board outside saying 65 cents beer all day, we both thought it was worth a punt. This would turn out to be a very random afternoon!

By this point it was 11:45 and we got the first, crisp ice cold beer which was amazing. Around us were some gentleman who have that feeling of being expats which actually turned out to be true. We first got talking to Tim who was quite a flamboyant American who was living in Phnom Penh. He reminded us of Elton John and the bloke from Frasier which was quite funny. Soon afterwards another interesting man turned up called Don who obviously had been coming to he place regularly and knew Tim well. It didn't take much observation to work out either Don had a very heavy night or he was still drunk which turned out to be a combination of both. You're initial impression of him was basically a bit of an 'arse' and he could come over quite intimidating as he does ask some probing questions. As he was having more passion fruit and rum however and taking in the joint which tim was passing round he became more jovial.

I learned he had travelled around the world for a long time after being a teacher, originally from Canada and the US. He had lived in Vietnam for the past 10 years but recently split from his wife and decided to cross the border to Cambodia. The whole afternoon was a bit of a blur and was just bizarre really. Having random conversations with the expats about work, love lives, Tim crying because his friend was doing all this charity work, Don looking more and more stoned as the afternoon went on. Tim went off for a while and brought back his new born puppies on a moped! They were very cute and provided much entertainment but again we had just come to is bar for one beer and now it was 4:30pm!! We were very kindly bought some drinks as well which was very generous but I felt myself getting more and more dehydrated.

At about 6pm Laura and we decided to grab some food and get changed. We made the walk back through town to the hotel, got changed and left the steam pit of our room!! We stopped by our usual street stall and had noodles then strolled back to the bar. Unfortunately the place was full of obvious expats and our little consortium had disbanded. Don looked a little off his rocker and could kill someone and he left without saying anything...... a bizarre man! Laura and I made an excuse we were still hungry and headed off with no real intention to return tonight. Laura was feeling very warm and I was hoping she wasn't coming down with something.

Still being quite peckish, we stopped at a different food stall and orders fried noodles. However, after drinking water we both realised is was probably thirst rather than hunger! Laura couldn't eat hers so I stepped up and ate both portions. The noodles were very good and went down well.... we were then joined by a young Cambodian lad who spoke very good English. He told us he was planning to move to the UK to study and spoke five languages. It was obvious he was very educated but I think Laura was feeling the heat and the conversation ended soon after the food. We said our farewells and headed back to the hotel where the room was again unbearable. It was cooler outside the room which is crazy as there is no ventilation whatsoever! Laura wasn't feeling great and passed out very quickly and I don't think I was too far behind her.