Cambodia: Phnom Penh

Hi! This is Kenzi speaking. So far, Cambodia is pretty similar to Thailand. There are a few differences, though. One of them is that Cambodia uses USD instead of Baht. Their normal "local" currency is the Rial (which is 4,000 to the $) but for the tourists, they accept the green stuff. This is great for me because I happened to bring my US wallet along on this trip with me and I am really happy to have it here in Phnom Penh (pronounced Gnome Pen).

Yesterday, we went to this AMAZING restaurant called The Shop. It reminded me of the Artisan Bakery back in Ouray. Artisan is a lot better though. I got a really good chicken, bacon, goat cheese panini and it was really delicious. After lunch, we were originally going to go to the chocolate right next door called Chocolate; but when we got there, it ws waaaaaaaay too expensive. 6$ per 100g! We decided to go back to The Shop and get one of their yummy pastries. I actually got a small loaf of ciabatta bread. It was really good! Audrey and Rock got chocolate pastries that were also really deicious. However, I decided that since my treat was the cheapest and it lasted me the longest that it was the best deal.

We also went to the National Museum yesterday and most of it was Hindu gods and Buddhas. Today, we went to the Royal Palace. It was kinda a rip off because the actual palace was closed. All we got to see was the Silver Pagoda. I was kind of disappointed in that though because al the silver tiles on the floor were covered up by rugs and carpets. You couldn't even call it the "silver" pagoda. After that and the park, we had to check out of Hotel 9 and transfer to Villa Samnang. And it turns out that we didn't book the room we thought we did. Our room only has a double and a twin bed. With 5 people, it is very crowded. We accidentally booked the wrong room and it's really crowded, but at least none of the people speak very good English!

After we ditched our packs, we walked around in the hot sun for a while. We found a really yummy coffee shop and spent about an hour drinking white chocolate mocha frappes and eating croissants. That's pretty much all that's been happening around here. Bye!