Cambodia Day 1: Phnom Penh The day has finally arrived! Yes, we are going on an expedition to see the famous ancient city of Angkor. Apart from Cat and Irene, I’ve never met the other half of the group but I’m sure they are equally as excited as my hubby and I, maybe even more. We met Cat at the ERL station in Bandar Tasik Selatan and travelled the cheapest way possible by ERL to KLIA. “Cheapest” meant we couldn't do direct, had to get down at the next station to purchase tickets again at a stop-over before KLIA. 

We reached KLIA at 1.00 pm, checked-in and later met up with the rest of the group at McDonald’s. After that, it was down to one last bite of fast food before leaving for Cambodia, a land unknown to most of us except for one or two episodes of Travel Discovery and whatever information and photographs we saw from travel sites and blogs. 

With the exception of Cat and I, our little adventure group was made out of avid photographers from the Photographic Society of PJ. There were 8 of us on this 7-day photography expedition enroute to Angkor Wat. For Cat, I guess it was like an instant, hands-on photography lessons for 7 days. For me, I did plenty of brushing up on the skill and technicalities, as well as the remember-to-clean-lens as often as possible because of the dusty environment. I’ve never cleaned my camera lens as many times in the past week in Cambodia as I did in the last two years of using digital cameras...haha... 

We touched down in Phnom Penh at about 4:00pm local time. KK’s friend, Henry and our driver, Hai, was already waiting for us at the airport. We squeezed into the van with our luggages to our accommodation, Spring Guest House. Through the 15-minute ride from airport to hotel, we got our very first glimpse of Pnomh Penh and its people: endless acres of rice fields and flat land, traffic coming from all directions - bicycles, carts, trishaws, motorbikes carrying 3 or 4 people each (no helmets required), trucks and carts laden with goods piled as high as possibly could, trucks with more than 20 people riding on it, motorbikes pulling carts with goods and people on it, cars without registration plates, petrol sold on the streets directly from petrol drums or filled into re-used softdrink bottles. 

We had a splendid dinner by local standards at Restaurant 123, a Chinese restaurant which Henry recommended. After dinner, our driver took us for a tour around the city. We couldn't get down to take pictures, so we had to be contented to the view from our van. We passed by some "happening" places by the riverside and also on Sisowath Road. We returned to our hotel and went to have drinks at a coffee shop opposite the hotel. Coffee was irresistibly wonderful and of course kept me awake until 4:00am. We also pre-ordered our breakfast for the next morning as we wanted to start our journey early. Our journey continues...