Phnom Penh Day 1 21st October

This morning we took a 4 hour public bus ride to Phnom Penh - the capital city.

We're staying in a hotel just off the Tonle Sap river. The city is hot, sticky and so dirty. There's piles of open rubbish just left on the side of the road - it gives off this sour, putrid smell every time you walk past a pile. Also, the people are less friendly than in the quieter towns. Its busy with lots of street stalls selling food including roast duck, fried cockles and barbequed bananas on sticks.

This afternoon I looked around the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. The Cambodians have a monarchy and King Norodom Sihamoni has his residence here. The complex was built by the French in the 19th century but in the Cambodian style. Apart from a french colonial style house which Napoeon III had shipped over here and rebuilt after Princess Eugenie no longer needed it to stay in in Egypt.

We couldn'y go into alot of the buildings as they were private royal residences. This was slightly annoyoing seeing as we'd paid $6.25 to get in!! The Silver pagoda was beautiful though. Filled with various treasures and the floor covered with 6000 tonnnes of silver tiles. It was a shame that none of the artifacts were looked after and in fact, where the silver tiles had started to come apart, they had been stuck back into place with masking tape!!

In the evening we did a walking tour of the city and came across yet more street stalls - this time one was selling fried insects - a local delecacy if you're fed up with the crisps!! A couple of the blokes immediatley ate the fired tarantulas but Hannah and I walked off without buying anything. Later in the bar, me, Hannnah and anther girl all admitted we were a bit disappointed we hadn't tried the local delecacy. So thetour guide nipped on a motobike\, went back to the stall, and brought back 3 freshly fried tarantulas. There was no backing out now so we had to eat them. They were crispy and so chewy but all you could really taste was fried oil. There are some really funny photos I'll post of facebook.