Day 17 - Vietnam to Cambodia

We transferred from our cruise boat onto a 30 seater speedboat at 7.30 am which crossed the border at Song Tien into Cambodia and continued up the Mekong to Phnom Penh. This took over 5 hours, an hour of which was spent getting through Vietnamese and then Cambodian customs. We had to wait quite a long-time at the Vietnamese side where they had a large waiting room on a floating platform which had plenty of clothes, souvenirs and refreshments on sale. Getting into Cambodia was much quicker. Their waiting area was a little hut in a very nice shady garden with a fish pond and little temple but no shops. There were hardly any other boats on the river inside Cambodia except for small fishing boats.

 
Temple at Cambodian border

 
Fish pond at Cambodian border

 
On the speedboat

 
Floating village

 

 On arrival at Phnom Penh we first had lunch which seemed to be in an old converted railway station.

 

 
Lunch venue

After lunch we went to visit the Royal Palace.  There are not so many motorcycles here as there were in Vietnam but there are a lot of tuk tuks.  It is very hot and humid here, probably the highest temperatures we have experienced so far.

 
Building at Royal Palace

 
Building at Royal Palace 

 
Building at Royal Palace 

 
Royal Palace grounds

 
Building and gardens at Royal Palace 

 
Building and gardens at Royal Palace 

 


We then went to the Cambodia National Museum where we saw some of the countries treasures many of which were looted or damaged during the Indochina War and Kymer Rouge regime but which are gradually being found and returned to Cambodia including some relics that were in the British Museum in London.

 
Entrance to museum with party of school children 
visiting as part of their school studies

 
Garuda statue

 
Ancient sandstone relics

 
The worlds longest woven scarf


We met for dinner and were taken to a really lovely restaurant that served the traditional Cambodian dish of Chicken Amok which was very tasty.










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