Phnom Penh 1/17/13

After more than 24 hours of travel, we finally arrived in Phnom Penh around midnight. Laurie’s friend Chenna picked us up at the airport with his wife and two kids. The hotel (White Mansion) turned out to be great. It’s a beautiful colonial mansion turned into a hotel last year. The room is huge and so is the bathroom. After breakfast in the hotel café, we went for a short walk. It took just a few steps into the city to be reminded how I love SE Asia. Love the smells, the smiling people, even the heat and the traffic. At noon we met with Chenna and his wife and had lunch with them in a lovely restaurant called Khmer Surin. After lunch they drove us to the National Gallery and then to Wat Phnom. Afterwards we sat down and discussed visiting the village of Phnom Da, which is planned for Saturday. In the evening we went to another great restaurant --Ramdeng, which is run by an NGO that trains street kids for restaurant work. We had some unusual dishes -- chicken and jack fruit salad,eggplant with pork and coriander and big prawns in curry sauce. All delicious. All this + 3 beers was $25. Then we walked the 10 or so blocks back to our hotel and crashed.