I opened my eyes around 7am. Tohl was waiting for me downstairs to finish the tour in Angkor. I decided to leave with the 2pm bus so I could have spent the night directly at Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Before seeing the last temples, I decided to go and visit the nearby villages. The Cambodians living around Siem Reap are amongst the poorest people in South East Asia. You can still see little children running around totally naked and bathing in the water of the surrounding rice fields. Many of them will never go to school, and the majority of the older ones (12-14 years old) were forced out of school because their families couldn’t afford to pay 100$ per year for their education. Despite all that and despite having nothing (and most probably also nothing to really looking forward to), they had always a spare smile to give me. We stopped to get a bottle of water and one local family, happy to see a stranger, offered me a cup of steamed rice. Their smiles and their joy, with nothing to offer if not a warm welcome, made me realize even more that I am, and I have always been, a very lucky man.
I obviously arrived back to the hotel quite late, but fortunately I managed to catch the bus to Phnom Penh. I quickly said goodbye to Thol and jumped into the bus. Six hours journey and like the previous one, I chose my guest house during the trip, reading my lonely planet book. I generally choose the guest house recommended in the book which is also near the arrival bus station. The journey was quite comfortable this time and I manage to read, to sleep and to chat a little bit with the other passengers. There was a nice Cambodian girl sitting next to me, who offered me some mangos and coconut; I found out later that she was a prostitute in Phnom Penh, visiting her family in Siem Reap. I also met fortunately a nice guy that at a first look didn’t look Cambodian; he was in fact Japanese, working for a Japanese NGO on development and agriculture in Phnom Penh.
Once the bus arrived, Higuchi (this was his name) helped me to find the guesthouse. I asked him if he wanted to go and grab a bite together and he accepted, saying that he would have taken me to a cheap and very good local restaurant close to his office. Perfect..
He came half an hour later with its scooter, wearing a brand new jersey of the Italian football team. I smiled when I saw that, not being very proud at the same time of the poor result of Italy in the last world cup. We went to eat and later on he drove me a little bit around the city to show me the best places and monuments. I confess that the city is not very nice but the entire evening was very pleasant. Basically I found myself in Phnom Penh, riding a bike with a Japanese guy wearing an Italian jersey... I thought it was a very funny and random situation. We said goodbye after a couple of beers and a nutella crepe in one of the local bars in front of the Mekong river.
I went back to my hotel, I watched an episode of 24 and went to bed falling asleep almost immediately.
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