Days 11-12: Exploring Phnom Penh

Siem Reap to Phnom Penh - Sunday 26/12

Our Christmas Day started early, having to be ready to catch the 8:30 am bus from the bustling Siem Reap bus station down the main highway to Phnom Penh.

After running the gauntlet of hawkers at the bus station, insisting that you needed bananas, bread, a pineapple and other assorted things to eat for the journey, we settled in for the 6 hour trip.

Now, when we say "main highway" ... that's still by Cambodian standards ... most of the road still was two lanes at the most and for the entire journey still carried all forms of Cambodian transport - cars, buses, tuk tuks, bicycles, buffalo carts, farm tractor carts and many vintages of antique truck.

Watching our mini bus driver weave in and out around all these vehicles in Siem Reap was entertaining enough, watching the same thing from the front seats of a 45 seater full size bus was even more amazing. Somehow we did manage to reach Phnom Penh early afternoon with both the bus and all other vehicles unscathed.

After settling in to our new hotel (The Billabong - owned and run by an Australian), we headed out for Christmas shopping. Our tour Kris Kringle was a hoot before we headed out for our special Christmas dinner at a local restaurant called Hagar - this restaurant was setup by a Swiss charity to train and help disadvantaged women have a job in Phnom Penh.

After a hearty Christmas buffet, is was relatively late to bed but we all had a nice sleep in for Boxing Day.

Our first activity for the morning was a "cyclo tour", a one person tuk tuk driven by pedal power where the passenger sits in the front and the driver pedals from the back. This is another organisation helping disadvantaged people, but this time for men. Our cyclo drivers gave us a tour of the sights near our hotel, including the Wat Phnom temple, the Independence monument and the Royal Palace.

After our cyclo ride, we switched back to tuk tuks and visited a couple of the organisations that Julie's school trips have previous worked with. Firstly we visited the rehabilitation centre that Ellen worked on many years ago to help build a playground for the kids - unfortunately this centre now looks very run down and all the hard work done by Templestowe College looks very uncared for. Julie suspects the land in ear marked by the government for another development in the near future.

We also visited the Starfish Foundation, the school centre that this years school group had worked in - this is still very much an active centre, offering Phnom Penh's poorest children the chance at an education - if you helped sell chocolates this year, the money went to the Starfish Foundation to support their work. We just happened to visit on a Sunday so unfortunately school was not in session, but it was great to see the centre.

We had lunch at a very pleasant cafe, associated with Hagar and also supporting disadvantaged women, before the girls hit the shops again at the Russian markets - this is the oldest market is Phnom Penh and a chaotic maze of narrow alleys crammed with stalls ... who knows what really happened in their but the backpacks were bulging once everyone emerged.

Then it was back to the hotel for a cool down swim before the second cheapest dinner of the trip at a local chinese dumping house - we were quite obviously the only white faces in the house (albeit a very small house) as this was definitely not a tourist place to eat.

Tomorrow is a long day as we will continue our learning about the sad part of Cambodia's recent history.