6 weeks to realize

On the road again for a 6 hour bus ride to Phnom Penh. We arrived at 1600 and fought off 50 harassing tuk-tuk drivers and just walked the few blocks to the main area. We generally walk if it's less then 3km and we have our bags, if we don't have our bags then we walk until I start yelling at Michael which he claims is about 30 minutes in midday sun. A lot of times people have no idea where they are so the tuk-tuk driver charges double or triple what they charge a local and then take a roundabout way so your not mad that you paid $3 to go 300 feet.

We found a guesthouse and we're being walked to our room when the kid showing us around asked if Michael was my boyfriend. I said no he's my husband, he looked at us bewildered and said oh you're so young. Well thank you Cambodian boy! We get to our room and it has two single beds which isn't a big deal about half our rooms have had two beds but what this kid said got me thinking. Many times on this trip locals have referred to Michael as my friend, I just figured their English was limited and really it didn't seem necessary to correct them but now I realize that they all thought we were travel partners. Most of the backpackers we've met have been solo travelers or single same sex travel buddies who pick up more partners along the way. Our Scottish friends left Thailand with a guy who was also staying at the same place and they travel to two countries together before going their separate ways. Nothing romanic just people to travel with, it's more common than not. So from now on I'll ask for a double bed, I just can't believe it took 6 weeks to realize this, the whole time I just assumed they were out of one bed rooms.

After assessing the room situation we took a walk around town and it was great. Along the river there were grown men playing what we think is the Cambodian version of hacky sack, badminton, some form of soccer and the best one was mass aerobics. Once it got dark there was a group of kids doing some group dancing and not even 200 feet to the left was another group of adults doing aerobics. We made our way over to the night market which was the first one we've been to that is for the locals not tourists! We loved it. We even caught a talent show of some sort. Then we did some preliminary research for our outing tomorrow and we were done for the night. There's a Russian market that we're going to check out tomorrow night, we weren't sure where it was and if you stand in one place too long you get accosted by at least 5 tuk-tuk drivers. Luckily it seems the beggars in this city are less or just in a different area. The ones in Siem Reap were bruttal, grabbing us and yelling.

Pic: Group aerobics at its finest