After such a tiresome day, not to mention hot, all we wanted to do was to chill out in the room with the wifi and the tv and not move. But we are on holiday, in a new place which we have yet to explore, there was no way we would waste half a day just like that. So I whipped open a tab in the browser and searched for Phnom Penh.
Checking the map, we decided to walk towards the Royal Palace in hopes that we will find the embarkation port for all the tours for the hour ride Mekong/Tonle Sap river cruise. After walking for about 15 minutes, we saw a grand building and mistakenly mistook it for the Golden Pagoda. Rounding it, we saw no ticket counters, and most importantly, not one gate was opened.
We must looked quite lost because one young Tuk Tuk driver came by and asked what we were looking for. I replied by asking where the ticket counter is and he chuckled and said though the Royal Palace closes at 5, the last ticket sold is at 4pm. Just our luck, we were two minutes late.
The young Tuk Tuk driver was Bo Ra, three months shy of graduating with an accounting degree from the National University of Management. We settled on a hour plus tour around the city with him for USD10 but ended up paying him 50000 (equivalent to USD12.50) because he was just so nice.
He took us to the newly built parliament, the Vietnam-Cambodia monument, the independence monument, Wat Phnom, the Australian embassy, the convention centers at Diamond Island (it is new and we were told it was financed by the Koreans), the railway center, Sunway Hotel, Raffles Hotel, the new buildings that cost USD 31 million – the building that houses the Council of Ministers.
When we were done (it took about 1 hour 40 minutes actually), he negotiated further works with us. So tomorrow we will be seeing him at 7.30am and will spend half a day with him being ferried to the killing fields and the genocide museum. We asked him to drop us at a good Khmer restaurant and he ended up dropping us at a place near the riverside, facing it actually.
Our amok chicken, stir fry vegetables with pork and fried pork rib cost us USD14.50. The amok chicken was excellent, it taste a little bit like the nyonya otak otak which is marinated steamed fish. The texture was also similar. The mango smoothie that I ordered was thick and smooth and it tasted of real mangoes (which is really important).
