On our last day in the Kingdom of Cambodia, if you think we'd be sleeping in at our hotel and just wait around for our car transfer to the bus terminal, you're actually wrong (even though I kinda wish we did just that).
Glimpse of a sunrise sky..
Like I said, no Sea View here guys..
My mom was back on her mission to send yet another postcard from the post office here in Sihanoukville. This wouldn't have been a problem per say had the roads in this part of the country been half as developed as its surrounding buildings! (which isn't really much..) On top of the really troublesome way over to the post (where I booked our usual ride through PassApp), well guess what? The f^($ing driver cancelled our book when we were already out in the middle of nowhere!!! It was a literal highway robbery when he didn't really give us a chance to say no when he arranged to transport us to the post office and later back at the hotel at the cost of $40!!!! What the effing f^($!!!
I hope that postcard was worth it mom (even though it hasn't really arrived in the Philippines as of now yet..) #AllForA$40Postcard
That pointy tip is just good for..
Lesson learned the expensive way, NEVER use PassApp in Sihanoukville (better not go AT ALL). So we did another round of freshening up--since you'd feel full of grit and dust after a trip like that in the roads of Sihanoukville (#BringFacemask)--then we waited a little in the hotel room after we'd packed our stuff, before we decided to wait at the lobby instead for our car transfer to take us to the bus terminal going back to Phnom Penh.
Fortunately, the ride back to Phnom Penh was a smooth one and we even had a decent stopover at a cafe on the way.
Takeaway food! #LastMealinCambodia
It was a long ride back and we even encountered horrible traffic along the way to the airport, fortunately our local tour agent, Ms. Chumpy, was reachable in WhatsApp and a couple of really nice locals helped us in coordinating with her the traffic situation. They let us know where to properly get off so our Phnom Penh airport driver could safely come meet us, so it wasn't really all that bad of a day.
Leaving on a jetplane!
But I guess the day was really trying my patience as I had to seat beside a wailing infant for the duration of the ride to our layover in KLIA2. At this point, I was sleep deprived and hungry as hell..
Technically dinner but having it at midnight = midnight snack
Don't know what mom chose..
...but at least you can see some noodles in mine
My hunger now already satisfied, it was time to get some real sleep around here, and since I wanted to have a good night's sleep (and also didn't want to risk another crying baby), I dragged my mother to the nearest airport hotel:
Let me tell you people, the Capsule Hotel was BETTER than the hotel we had in Sihanoukville!! Why? Because they managed to have breakfast even without a freaking dining area! HA! #LifesAJoke
To The Philippines and beyond!
And yeah, that's about it. My overall rating with Access Travel is superb! (Not really gonna blame them for that Sihanoukville hiccup, 'cuz yeah.. I did get a heads up from a co-travel blogger #HeMadeItLookSoGood) It's my first time booking with Access Travel and I can say I'd still book with them, especially when it comes to really customized tours. You don't really get much of that kind of service here in the Philippines and I'm so happy with Access Travel & Tours that they helped me tick off a travel destination from my Bucketlist! HOORAY!!!
On our second day in Phnom Penh, we're expecting to visit alot of the places indicated in our itinerary, we also had a different guide for the day named Mr. Sean. But first things first, breakfast!
Our first dip out in the morning sun was the Independence Monument, which was located near this really huge park where people could enjoy some early morning exercise. It was nice that they still had places like these in the city, 'cuz back in Manila, we were too congested to even have simple privileges like this.
For our next stop, which I really wanted to see in person because all the picture I saw online were really beautiful, was the Royal Palace!
Gates to the Royal Palace
It was magnificent seeing it up close! Everything just seemed to glimmer under the sun (as you can see in the pictures). It was too bad though that you couldn't take pictures of some of the inside places, but I understand their need for privacy (and protection), although we did get to take pictures inside the palace museum and imagine my surprise when I saw this:
Lucky colors for the day, starting from Sunday [leftmost] to Saturday [rightmost]
That's the museum on the right
There was more to see inside the royal complex, so we were next headed to the Silver Pagoda, taking pictures along the way:
Mr. Sean insisted we pose near this gateway...
The hallways surrounding the Silver Pagoda were painted in what looked to be like a storybook with a couple of stupas (where they housed the ashes of loved ones long passed) placed around the quad. But what really got me curious was that the Silver Pagoda wasn't really silver at all (not on the outside anyway)...
We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but it turns out the pagoda got its name since the floor inside was made out of silver! After getting a glimpse of the old coins that Cambodia used to have, we rounded the pagoda outside and found a miniature version of the Angkor Wat:
Getting excited for our Angkor Wat tour in a couple of days!
Nearing the end of our tour in the Royal Palace, we still got to take more pictures of the smaller exhibits near the exit:
Talk about being the elephant in the room...
Free water by the exit gate! #souvenir
Passing along the Tonle Sap Rivers, we next had a short but meaningful stop at Wat Unalom Pagoda, where we even got blessed by a monk just before they took a short break for lunch. Curiously, Mr. Sean even introduced to us what looked like their form of fortune-telling:
See that "pendulum" at the end of the red string? You have to like insert it between the cards while it's on your head
The National Museum was next, but Mr. Sean left us on our own then, saying that the museum had guides of their own and we could rent them. Fascinatingly, the guides he was talking about were audio headsets that you could rent for $5/pax. We didn't quite have those back in the Philippines yet, but we also didn't get our own here, since I personally preferred not having a voice talking in my head while I roamed around new places; Still I found it entertaining to see people staring intensely at a piece of art, probably thinking it had all the answers to their questions (and maybe, the audio did)..
Picture-taking wasn't exactly allowed (even though some of the other tourists did just that), so I wasn't able to document how this lady inside the museum handed us a couple of flowers to offer to Buddha, and if you give her a dollar (or two in our case) in return, she would also do this chanting stuff and tie a red string around your wrist:
I still have it with me, even though I didn't exactly know what it was she said that time...
All the walking we've been doing since that morning caught up with us, so we opted to sit down near the museum's gardens (where picture-taking was allowed), and bought coke and well, a couple of Angkor Beers (which we later consumed back in our hotel room).
Just before we left, we noticed that aside from postcards, the museum was also selling postage stamps! Mom wanted to send one out from each city we'd be passing, but worried that the Phnom Penh Post Office would be closed since we arrived during the weekends. Luckily, Mr. Sean was kind enough to assist us in dropping off mom's postcard.
That is not where you drop off your mail...
This is where!
No Posts on Sundays
And that was just the morning half of our day before we made the drive for lunch near the place of our next itinerary. P.S. my next post may not be for the weak of hearts.
