11 December 2015. Character building trip to Phnom Penh

I got to KL Airport at 07.40 for a 09.25 flight thinking I'd have time on my hands. How wrong can one be. There was the queue from hell for the check in/bag drop. I really don't see the point of checking in at home if this is the reward. One might just as well do the whole thing at the airport. Anyway, I asked a couple with miles to go how long they had been in the queue and they replied that it had been an hour. Things were not looking good. I joined the back which was now being controlled by a policeman. Fortunately, it must have speeded up a bit and I got checked in at around 08.45 and headed off for the next stage - immigration. This was another nice long queue with a very pernickety immigration officer at the nend of it. I've never known such a hassle getting out of a country!

By now time was getting tight and I still had a shuttle train to go. Another man on the same flight latched onto me and we sped from the shuttle down what semed like an endless series of corridors.

We just made the flight and settled back until stage 2 - the arrival.

I had decided on a visa on arrival and this all went smoothly enough and I went through to the carousel. It slowly dawned on me that the same bags were going round the carousel by now and mine wasn't one of them! The process for registering missing bags was quite efficient and there was nothing to do but hope.

I got a tuk tuk to the hotel and an introduction to Phnom Penh life. I had expected it to be like the rather sleepy Vientiane but not a bit of it. Everywhere was teaming with activity and it was more like Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh but with less pronounced level of development going on. I must say I instantly warmed to it and felt it made an interresting contrast to Kuching.

That afternoon, I decided to walk around the main sights and set off on what became a pretty hot walk. My first stop was Wat Than - a largeWat reminding me of those I'd visited last year in  Thailand and  Laos.

From there, I walked up to the Statue of Late king Norodom Sihanpouk and the independence Monument.

Carrying on past the Cambodia / Vietnam Friendship Monument,

I arrived at the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda Complex but decided to get a ticket another day as I was tired and it would have been a rush. Around the Palace seemed to be where the preyers on tourists congregated and a 'no thanks' T shirt would be handy.

I wandered up the riverside

 past a lot of tourist spots and explored Wat Phnom. This a a lot smaller than Wat Than and didn't spark my interest.

Round the back  were a good number of massages on offer that I declined!

Walking back I went passed the American embassy and then down Street 51 (Pasteur) which seemed to have a fair few drinking spots.

I got back to tthe hotel around 18.00 but there was no bag! After an hour or so, I asked the manager to call the number which he did and to my relief the bag was on its way. So that short-circuited the what to buy debate I had been having with myself.

In the evening I had a really nice Fisk Amok at the hotel and decided on an early night.