Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia

               Arrived in Phnom Penh (PP) from Kampot at about 2 pm, the journey taking about 4 hours

Colourful monks.....

by private car---I thought, as did my fellow passengers, a young couple from Ulster, that we had been booked on a full size, air con bus. Maybe there were not enough passengers signed up for the bus. Predictably in S.E. Asia, all tourist transportation situations are resolved with a series of cell phone calls among a networked group of drivers.
A rather crowded, dead straight road was the route to PP. Wandering cattle, tuk tuks, over-laden trucks, motor cycles and pedestrians all crossing the race track at will. Our vehicles air-con was hors de service, so sauna- like would be an apt description of the journey.
            The population of PP is offered at 1 1/2 million per Lonely Planet-----my own guess would have been in the 5 million area. This is to my surprise, a BIG city. I had expected, a rather sleepy little backwater, akin to Vientiane, capitol of Laos. Our approach on route #3 from the south, seemed endless on a major arterial road that could only be described as a meeting of 3rd. world chaos and environmental catastrophe. We crawled along through the stifling heat, noise and pollution---- don't forget that the windows of our car were fully

Temple facing my hotel....

open--no air con. We were dumped of at a point stated by our  driver, as being 'central'. Who knows, but motor bike taxi men assailed in a frontal attack, all 110% certain they knew where street #178 might be. As I explained in an earlier blog entry, the sales objective of any taxi man in this part of the world is to get bums on seats & worry about knowing where the passenger's destination might be, later. In Cambodia streets have a Cambodian name in local script and for the rest of us, they allocate an identifiable number code to that specific street---trouble is the taxi men don't seem able to match-up the two systems. I grimly held onto my motor bike taxi man for the best part of an hour until he was able decipher the code--all for a $3 US fare!
            PP is bisected by a very wide river, marked on my tourist map as the Tonle Sop. The Royal Palaces and major temples located in the city centre appeared to be nothing short of spectacular, as I briefly viewed them from the the pillion seat of my hurtling motor cycle taxi.
            Late this afternoon after I emerged from my hotel following a wash and short relax, the streets in the city were pulsing with noise and

A literate man....

activity with considerable numbers of tourists wandering about. Those needing western style food and an respite from the market stall (spicy) food vendors, seem to be well catered for in this city.