Dear all,
It was soooooo nice not be woken up by an alarm clock! I am not sure how long we slept, but I think it was till about 9h30.
As we still did not have any positive reply from couchsurfers, we decided to book the hotel for one more night still hoping that someone woud invite us to stay with them the following day.
As we would like to see the city without beeing on a tuktuk, which would not allow us to stop here and there, we took our bikes for a tour around the city.
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| Peter & Marta at the central market |
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| Stop sign in Cambodia (most of them only uses Cambodian letters) |
In Phnom Penh, the lake Tonle Sap (that is by far the largest lake in Cambodia, coming all the way from Sieam Reap) merges with Mekong river (that comes from Laos).
Have you noticed that most of the capitals has rivers (Lisbon, Paris, London, Vienna, Budapest, Riga, Vilnius, Rome, Prague, Bangkok...). Probably it is easy to explain as back in time it was the easiest and probably only way that the goods were transported. Well, I never have thought about it before.
It was built a walking path by the river and it was nice to take that our bikes through that path.
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| Cycling slowly by the lake |
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| Marta in Phnom Penh |
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| Peter Lamb in Phnom Penh |
By the river they have a lot of flags from different countries (I do not know for which reason, neither its order because they are not in alphabetic order). It was a shame to see that the Portuguese flag was not correct! The green and red colours did not seem to have the dimensions that should and the "yellow part of the flag" was definatly not the original. I cannot consider myself patriot or that I care too much of the country, but there is whom is resposible for diplomatic issues and the flag that is stand next to the other ones, should be the original and no other. Is not that the responsability of our diplomacy abroad?
By the river You can find the parliament and also the royal palace. Pictures are not that great as in were taking facing the sun.
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| The royal palace |
We cycled as well to the monument of the independence that was built after Cambodia beimg independent of French occupation.
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| Monument of independence |
You still find here and there some aspects that shows that France took over Cambodia, as some neighbourhoods have the architecture that undoubtly has french influence (sometimes it reaaly seems that you are in Alger or Marseille - only the Arabs are missing), and also you can spot a lot of french influence on some names for shops.
We had luch at a "touristic pub" owned by a french guy, although all the staff being Cambodian.
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| Lunch time |
Some of the streets has names, but most of them has numbers. So all they city is a complex grid of numbers, that most of the times has some logic but there is a gap here and there, and for that reason you need a map to get through it.
I was impressed as well by the amount of construction they have this days with some quite huge buildings as well.
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| Large buildings being constructed in Phnom Penh |
We had dinner at a local restaurant, quite early. I would say around 18h. Only the owner spoke some English and the restaurant is full of staff just sitting and staring at you. It made me feel quite uncomfortable. Well, we ordered some steak for the two of us, but it came to our table almos raw. Well, I like to eat meat medium, but raw meat in Cambodia after seeing the market, no thank you very much. Maybe what they have done with the steak after we send it back was even worse, but lets not think about it, ok?
We decided to go to cinema in the evening. We had the option of going to a smaller, independent movie hall, but we did not like that much the movie they were showing in the evening. So we took the second option and went to a bigger mall, to see the Jodie Foster's movie "Before I go to sleep".
It was a quite nice thriller, but for us, the most thrilling thing was our way there. We decided to walk (something that almost no one does there, as the locals have their scooters and the tourists take the tuktuk. When me and Marta were crossing a smaller street a scooter with two guys let us start crossing and as soon as we took somthing like two or three steps into the crossing they drove the scooter just behind us and the scooter's passenger grabbed Marta's purse. Luckly he did not catched it well and Marta's stripe is quite strong, so they did not take the bag (and Marta was not pulled from the scooter). Well, the following seconds are hard to describe, you tend to go for another street, as you have no clue if it was only a imexperienced first timer thief, or if they will come back and make a second round stopping this time and somehow threaten you this time. Nothing more happened and it was nice to get to the movie hall, adter being lost in small streets for a while.
For the way back we took a tuktuk ride. First the driver wanted 4 USD, we said no way!! We offered 2, and that it was already too much, as it is quite close and we know it. he insisted on 3, we were inflexible on 2, but we could finally agree. 2,25USD. Jesus, it is tiring to be "negotiating" all the time!
Summary of the day:
- Daily distance: 11,6 km
- Daily time: 1h06m36s
- Average speed: TBA
- Maximum speed: TBA
Total travelled so far: 656,75 km
Total time cycling: 39h08m11s
And that is all for now folks!
Best,
Peter
Postado com o Blogsy
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