Saturday 24 October Phnom Penh - Oudong - Koh Chen

After breakfast we are off to Oudong, Cambodia's royal capital from 1618-1866.

We visited a monastery for a Buddhist blessing experience with the monks.

We then walked through the area. They have created what equates to a free retirement village for locals who have no where else to live. They also all eat together once a week and we were fortunate to be present to see the monks parade down the street to the hall.

Some of the boys are very young. If a family is very poor and cannot provide for their sons, they send them to be a monk where they will be fed, educated and hopefully safe. They can leave at any time, but to what future? Those wearing white are laymen and women, about 400 of them here.

Next we head to a silver and copper making community. Traffic is horrendous mainly due to road works. Amazing, some of the sights along the way.

Time to head back to the boat and more traffic delays but we get back in time for a late lunch.

Had to laugh at all the little store fronts still open even though you would need to take your life in hand to get to them! After lunch we then have a 2 1/2 hour tuk tuk ride which was good fun even though being so close to all the vehicles made me glad I have a current will! We had 3 stops along the way, ending at the Central market. Our driver was a lovely fellow who tried hard to point out things to us along the way but I forget the names of lots of things I photographed.

Back to the boat for a quick freshen up and then dinner which was very nice, yet again. I can ask days start my diet tomorrow. Some of our tour group had said that they went to a sky Bar the previous evening and it had great views. I had decided that I was not going to the onboard trivia quiz night so had teed up our tuk tuk driver to meet us at 8.30 near the boat to take us to that bar. Steve and Therese wanted to come too so off we went to the 5 star Rosewood hotel's sky Bar in the 37th floor. It was magic! The views were all wow factor. Drinks were very special concoctions, but I stuck to my dirty gin Martinis.

And to top off a great evening, it was a full moon that we are sitting out under. Our lovely tuk tuk driver was waiting for us, bless him, and he took us back to the boat, with a huge smile on his face when we paid him with a generous to. Back on board we went to the lounge where Dennis was singing. He is very good, but 'Karen from Adelaide' (must find out her real name) was vying for centre stage too. Thankfully she left so Therese asked Dennis to play 'Choosin Texas' and we got to do our line dance to it. I think I managed to do most steps and had fun anyway. Has been a great day but it is now very late so off to bed we go. Juat as an aside, our tuk tuk driver told me that he had 3 young children but his family live 200km away. He stays in the city for 20 to 25 days and then drives his tuk tuk back home for a 4 hour trip, when he has made some money. He sets up a hammock in the seating area of the tuk tuk, pulls down the side screens and sleeps there as he has nowhere to live in the city. He was working really hard with his English, and was thrilled after the tour group tuk tuk ride when I asked him if world be available to take us to the sky Bar later in the evening. He wasn't allowed to drive his tuk tuk next to the boat so used google translate to say that he wanted to take us but wasn't allowed to. That being the case I told him that we would meet him outside the port authority entry and we wouldn't tell anyone on the ship that we had booked him! He was so grateful he couldn't take the smile off his face. He also had to drop us a bit down the street from the port entrance when he took us back after the sky Bar. He was prepared to wait outside the hotel for as long we wanted rather than look for any other fares. Such a lovely fellow...