Cambodia

My parents are coming to see me at the start of February for a few weeks and we're meeting in Siem Reap, so I thought I'd get to Cambodia early. I've been to Cambodia before, right at the start of my travels in November 2014 but I was interested to see it with fresh eyes.

To save money, I'd booked an early flight to Phnom Penh which meant setting my alarm for 4am. I didn't manage to get to sleep until 2am and was then woken up 10 minutes later by a loud drunk person coming in to the dorm. I couldn't get back to sleep so I just got a taxi earlier than I needed and arrived at KL Sentral to wait for the first train of the day to the airport at 5am.

On the plane I was sat between two female travellers. To my left was Amelie from France and to my right, Stacey from Australia. We all chatted throughout the flight and I suggested we all share a taxi from the airport.

Stacey already had a Cambodian visa but Amelie and I were getting ours on arrival. The process took about 15 minutes and although the visa official tried to keep some of my money (twice!), it was easy and we were soon outside. Stacey and I got a cheap sim card each and then we haggled for a tuk tuk in to the centre. We were all booked in to different hostels. Mine was the flashiest (but not the most expensive) in a brand new hostel with privacy as you can see in the photo.

It was only about 9.30am but I hadn't slept so once I'd had a shower and tested out my bed, it was hard to get up. An hour later, I met Amelie for breakfast. We went to a cafe and had a local Khmer (Cambodian) porridge thing. It was delicious!

I had to have a sleep after that but in the evening the three of us met up along with Ben, a friend Stacey had met in Thailand.