January 28th - Fast Boat to Phnom Penh

Alarm call in the dark this morning as we have to get sorted and clear the cabins by 7 am. We have enjoyed having three nights in the same room, particularly as it easily the best accommodation of the trip. The sunrise is invisible and there is a covering of grey cloud. We take breakfast at one of the open air tables and enjoy the breeze while we wait for what has been described as a 'speedboat' to arrive and take us up river to the capital of Cambodia. This is scheduled to take five hours including passport formalities.

When said boat arrives it has an enclosed cabin and a rear deck with open sides and a canopy. Our luggage gets loaded in a hold underneath the rear. There is just enough room for us all to be seated in the cabin which is like a very cosy coach with limited headroom. At least the windows open to allow in a bit of air. We get under way and the ship's boy issues Application Forms for Cambodian Visas and a different form in two sections for recording arrivals and departures. We are asked to fill these in although some of the information requested is not available. Some of the group complete the forms in black ink to be told that they must start again using blue ink. By a stroke of good fortune the pen that D is carrying in his day pack is blue.

Having had the homework checked D is allowed to go out on the after deck but not for long. After about twenty minutes the power comes off and the boat glides in to moor at the Vietnamese border post. Our passports, paperwork and US $34 per head is collected and we are ushered into a waiting area/cafe/money changers. The temperature is getting quite sweaty and the room is not well ventilated. D changes his loose change Vietnamese dong into Cambodian Riels which means we can have a mug of Hot Lipton apiece. As we wait the room gets more and more crowded as more speedboats full of people arrive. After about half an hour we are called back to the boat. Our ship's boy is carrying a bag containing all of the paperwork.

The boat roars up the river for about five minutes and then pulls up at a jetty with a sign that tells us that it is the Cambodian Border Post. Here we hang around for another half hour until our passports are handed back to us and we have to queue up to get them stamped several times. Somewhere along the way a paper visa has been pasted in, valid for a month and bearing the endorsement 'Employment not permitted' . That's a relief.

Back on the boat we power on at an estimated 55 - 60 kph. The boat's speedometer is broken. On the Cambodian side of the border there is markedly less river traffic and the river banks are mainly open fields with much less afforestation than in Vietnam. We travel for about an hour before we see a town or any signs of industry. We only see one very modern bridge over the river and ferries are few and far between. About two and a half hours the high rise cityscape of Phnom Penh materialises through the haze. There are tower cranes everywhere.

We disembark and help the crew unload the luggage. Of a guide there is not a sniff but there only appears to be one way to go so we take it. Eventually a man introduces himself as Hong, our guide and he points us to a bus where we divest ourselves of the bags before retracing our steps to the Titanic Restaurant. Here we are shown to seats on an airy terrace with a canopy. There is a small stage with a roneat ek player and there is draught beer so it is the perfect Sunday Lunch venue. There is even a performance by a  costumed dancer. The food delivered bears no relation at all to what is listed on the set menu but it is very good.

After lunch the day gets rather heavy as we visit one of Pol Pot's prisons that is now the Genocide Museum and then drive out of the city to one of the Killing Fields. What happened in Cambodia in the 1970s was just appalling and the history is laid out with no attempt to water down the misery. There were no laughs on the coach this afternoon and some tears were shed. We were pretty quiet and thoughtful as the coach crawled through the rush hour traffic to our hotel. This is opposite the US Embassy and nowhere near anything useful like a SIM card shop. Despite information to the contrary the Viettel card will not work in Cambodia. This may cause problems with posting, only time will tell.

By the time we get to the Subway Hotel we are all hot, sweaty and grumpy. Hong tells us to be ready to go out for dinner in 35 minutes. We are still waiting for suitcases and there is a mutiny. He finally concedes a further 15 minutes as the bags arrive. We debate whether to skip dinner but decide to go ahead. Only 22 out of our party show up. The other eight miss a treat. We take a short coach ride to the Grand Palais Hotel which looks OK. There are two long tables set up in a high ceilinged dining room.

From the off it is clear that there is a language problem. Drinks are ordered but only some arrive. Some people are ignored as the try to order drinks. The food is pretty poor. Crunchy dried fish salad, tepid prawn and tofu soup without any prawns, chicken with over cooked Pak choi and a disgusting dessert called Pumpkin Custards. The only decent bits were the deep fried battered hard boiled eggs in tamarind sauce and the fried fish with ginger. The staff keep delivering stuff to the tables but never remove anything. It is as if none of them hads ever worked in a restaurant before and there appears to be nobody in charge. It is so inept that we can only laugh.