Good morning SE Asia!: 15/12/2014

We had stayed in a little bungalow complex on the outskirts of a nowhere town for our first night in Cambodia. It was quite a nice place and the family had a few nice cars so not short of a bob or two. The dinner we had around the corner was odd though, served in separated little hut style enclaves dotted around a big yard. Not bad food though but we struggled with the menu and the language! We should have learnt a bit more before we crossed the border. It poured down all night and we got soaked going back. Johanna took some time to get rid of all the bugs in the room using the flip flop swatter technique but the ants were everywhere. Not a cheap room either at £10. Bed was comfy though.

We had to pay for the breakfast which was limited in choice but was OK. A coffee and a mixed omelette which was brought from the kitchen by one of the young guys on his scooter. When he brought he second one he left the bike in gear (they are automatic) and climbed off to pass up the omelette to the woman who was serving us. Just then one of the younger kids decided he wanted to climb up on the scooter - by grabbing the throttle to pull himself on. Well the bike shot off and scooped the delivery lad off his feet. The woman he was passing the omelette over the hedge to made a grab for the plate as he went down and somehow got hold of it mid air and even avoided it slipping off the plate. Top reactions! We thought the little kid was going to get walloped but they just laughed!

We set off agian expecting the worst from the road but hoping for the best. It was not quite as severe as yesterday as they had laid less of the gravel base layer and sometimes there was even a bit of the old potholey surface left to use. The dust was chronic again though. Today was shorter than yesterday and we had more energy and less hangover so it did not seem as bad. It felt like slow progress nonetheless, but we managed the 75km in about 4.5hrs.

One thing we have noticed over the last two days is the continual presence of roadside political messages, or rather party advertisements. The parties do not have the most imaginative names and it reminded me of that famous Monty Python scene from the Life of Brian. The various parties are listed here. I think each party perhaps covered a 10km stretch of roadside with maybe a sign or banner every 500m. They were not messages, just a picture of their leaders looking smug and the party name. There is an election happening soon but it seems that resistance to the current party in power (Cambodian Peoples Party) is futile. There are currently some protests in the city centre which we planned to avoid. Hun Sen has been the National Leader almost since Pol Pot got knocked off the spot and it doesn't seem likely to change soon with him being the party's deputy.

Arriving in Phnom Penh the capital of Cambodia was not as smooth as expected. The traffic was not too bad, but the roads were terrible, almost all the way into the city centre. We expected something more like HCMC but it was a totally different place. There were a few tourists on the way in, but not too many. The sides of the roads were not as colourful with shops and food stalls either. It did look very interesting though and the area we had our hotel booked was right in the centre of the most interesting part of the city. We got some flavours of why this place was frequented by certain tourist types as we got nearer the hotel, but we will go into that side later. The hotel was an air-conditioned palace of cleanliness that was so appreciated when we arrived all dusty and sweaty again. The sun was really beating down in the afternoon, not a cloud in the sky, high humidity and the hottest part of the day about 35 degrees C.

We took another video, but have lost the willpower to edit them as the laptop crashes each time the video exports, plus it just takes and absolute age to create, so please excuse the full unedited video which we will post up of the last half an hour into the city.