The plan for today was to go to an orphanage in Phnom Penh, an activity that is fairly widly advertised around town, but on the way to stop at the Russian Market to first shop and secondly to buy some things for the kids.It turns out we're horrible people!!!!

What a great introduction that is!!! We started off fairly late with our new person driver, a tuk tuk man we used most days in Phnom Penh. The Russian market, apparently only a name, with no deeper meaning, was basically the same as the central market. However it was all under cover, much closer together, much hotter, much sticker, and had a few variation on the token tourist stuff. It turned out that these token tourist variations would capture the imagination of the girls and after a good hour, they decided that instead of go to the orphanage, we would stay at this market for some more time, and then go back to the central market, where we had been at the other day to buy those last pieces that we'd missed out on. This idea was further helped by the tuk tuk driver who had npreviously told us it would be a good idea to take $50 worth of rice for the kids, a figure way out of our budget brackets!!!I personally seem to be coming across as the good guy in this, and I'd like it to stay that way, but to be perfectly honest, I'd never been the most motivated to go to the orthanage in the first place, mainly based around the fact that me a kids don't seem to get on when the relationship attempts to develope past anything other than pulling faces at one another, which is how I won over the babies on the bus down from Ban Lung.

So a day of shopping insued. The two main things to come from it were

1. Linnea decided that she would buy two wall mounted pictures about 65cm by 65cm and about 1.5cm thick, made of metal and plastic, but basically fairly deleicate (thats about as precise as I can go, I apologize for lack of detail!!!) She also decided that she could carry these for the rest of her trip, through Cambodia, Southern Thailand and Vietnam and then take them as hand luggage on her flights home!!!! I not as certain!!!
2. Jade managed to buy a charger for her camera having lost her other one. It's a Cambodian model, so no need for a plug converter here, but at home!!!

That night, after a day of proving how nicer people we were!!! we decided we'd ahve a little drink with our meal at the Flying Elephant, given the silly cheapness of the Vodka!!! While eating away some guys from the next table asked us to take a photo of them, and conversations ensued. The original group was Dave Ramsey - Nottingham Trent Graduate, formerly of Mill Hill, and a largly sarcastic fan of Batchwood!! Sam the Kiwi, little else is known of Sam other than he parties the hardest out of anyone I've ever met, Cookey (Matt Cooke) the biggest guy in town and Kevin Bacon (Delaney) the token Californian (Dude that is sweet). We ended up spending the night with the guys, and as the night went on, more and more of their group started arriving, Olly and Ed mates from Bristol uni, Tiffany a crazy South African and Margueax a dengue Fevered Canadian. We had a great night, both the pinicle and the ultimate low for me personally at the time came at the famous Heart of Darkness. The Heart of Darkness was a club the guys had gone to every night in Phnom Penh, and turned out to be a cool place, we only went there after having a terrible 20 minutes or so at another club called the Orange club, where the locals weren't too happy we were there. Anyway, having entered Cambodia I'd been carrying my prized knife on me at all times (I'd heard bad things about the country all right!!!) but when entering the club everyone is given a good old hand search, so the guys suggested I hide it. At Orange Club this hadn't been a problem a tree root just down the street had sufficed, but at The Heart of Darkness the only place to put it was in a hole under a fence across the street. At the end of the night as I went to find it, it was gone and it turned out I was searching for it in umm not nice conditions!!!, it has to be said it's not one of my finest moments!!! Joined together with this being the first night I'd drunk redbull for manya a month due to the big downers it gives me, I wasn't in the best mood I way back. ANyway the girls had a great time and that night linked us togehter with a fantastic group of guys, who it turned out would be going down to Sinhoukville a day after us, so we could meet up there!!!