Phnom penh, the capital and finally some beach time.

The day started a little rough. I was quite exhausted but the High of travel life is something you can run off of. Oh, and Power naps, tricking your body into thinking it slept! Got on the bus at 11:30 and was able to finally relax a little on the 8 hour drive. On the drive into Phnom Penh there was some locals playing badminton, i was able to squeeze in a couple rallies with them. Was nice to do a sport again. We got into Phnom penh during the evening, it is a concrete jungle of 2 million people. There was piles of garbage everywhere and a lot of people living on the streets, the poorest city I had ever seen comparing it to Lima and Buenos Aires. We started out the night by going for supper where they had a tarantula shot, which was 8 live tarantulas put into a jar and then drowned in rice wine and let to die. The end product is a very potent shot. Tarantulas being my main fear, I chose to skip on the shot opting to order deep fried tarantula, however the restaurant was all out. Maybe next time. After supper we walked by the water front where we saw this giant illuminated Christmas light display of one of the leaders of Phnom penh. The little courtyard around the display had rats running around it and hundreds of cockroaches crawling all over the place, reinforcing my initial feeling of the city. At least I had a nice view of the city.

I took the day off to read up on the killing fields history and was satisfied with that. I
did laundry in the sink for the first time and was able to have it dry up by the end of the day. Before supper, I decided to wander around the nearby market, I had never seen
so much raw meat out in the open in my entire life, unchilled and giving off the most heavenly of smells, I had to walk faster to get through it as it was quite repulsive and would make me gag. Saw some very interesting things in the market.

We then went out for supper at a nice place by the water. Where they served happy pizza if you wanted, which is basically a marijuana pizza. I decided to go with the duck not choosing to venture.

We left the next day to go to Sihanouk and finally get some beach time. We were all glad to leave Phnom penh. On the way we stopped at a gas station and had fun on a merry-go round. It was so well oiled and designed, it would never stop. I gave it one spin and it kept going for 15 minutes.

 

We ate our lunch on the beach, in Sihanouk. We were surrounded by fresh seafood, from selling live crab and squid on the beach and cooking it right in front of us over these little fire cauldrons. We tried a squid right away and once again it had that cheese curd consistency, but this time with the amazing taste of BBQ. Loved it, would have it again anytime. Sam, the crazy Irishman, was mentioning this hippy bar at the other end of the beach, ben and I were curious so we decided to join him for the journey. The beach was littered with garbage and beer bottles in the water. We walked for about an hour and fifteen minutes till we finally saw a place painted in Tye dye and a Volkswagen bus drawn on the wall. We immediately assumed this was the hippie bar.

Walking in, there was a sign saying, Please ask bartender for legal substances, So we had a beer. We hung out there for a bit while the sun set.

We then Tuk Tuked back to the hotel. Our group supper was at the same place as lunch was which seemed to have a great quality of food. I decided to go with seafood, Richie and I split on a couple platters. We had the deep fried calamari(amazing) Squid(good) Tiger prawn(great) King Prawn(Huge shrimp the size of my hand, great) Barracuda (good) and Scallops(amazing, fresh on the shell).

During supper, there was fireworks and Chinese lanterns being launched throughout the night without stopping. I then went for a one hour massage for 10$ dollars. Really felt nice and relaxed after that I went home and passed out. A good nice couple day sequence of rest. I was ready for more at this point, onto the next day of adventure.

Stay awesome and follow your dreams.