Getting Back to Phnom Penh

The night before we left Siem Reap, we had tried to get bus tickets to leave in the morning, but they were already closed by the time we got around to it.  This just meant waking up extra early the next morning to see if we could snag some tickets in the short window between the ticket place opening and the bus departing (it was an early bus).  Being extra fancy, this time we took the $9 bus!  The only noticeable differences between the $5 and the $9 buses were that the $9 bus was full of Westerners, and had a hilarious on-board bathroom.  It was down in the baggage compartment, and the room was only about 4 feet high and just big enough to squat in.  Besides the tight fit, there was nothing to hold onto, so you just had to brace your legs against the wall and hope that the bus didn't do any abrupt braking!  Good times.

In Phnom Penh, we got a hotel in a little nicer part of town than last time, and went off to see the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda.  Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take pictures in these places, so you will just have to trust me when I say that they are pretty sweet, and in some places very very ornate.  The Silver Pagoda is not silver on the outside, but the inside has a silver floor!  Of course it is covered thoroughly with rugs so tourists don't step on it directly, which is a shame, because it would be a pretty amazing sight otherwise.  Later in the day, we moseyed over to the Independence Monument, a striking structure that stands in front of a long grassy park.  We spent hours there just hanging out and people-watching.  At night, there were fireworks by the monument, and a horde of excited young people rode past on motorcycles cheering and celebrating.  The reason for the celebration, which we actually learned from Chaa before leaving Siem Reap, is that UNESCO had ruled a temple on the border with Thailand to be a Cambodian possession.  Booyah, Thailand!

(Another unrelated but interesting fact that we learned from Chaa: the guy at our hostel had told us that Angkor Wat is owned and operated by a Vietnamese company, and Cambodia only gets a smallish percentage of the profits.  Chaa confirmed this when we asked him, but said that people don't mind, because the Cambodian government is so corrupt that giving them more of the profits wouldn't make much of a difference anyway.  Ooch.)