Phnom Penh to Bangkok - Day Twelve

We still had a few things we wanted to do in Phnom Penh before our 5pm flight. We took a tuk tuk over to the Russian Market, which we liked much more than the Central Market. While the Russian Market lacks the cool building that the Central Market has, the items for sale were more on par with what we wanted as souvenirs. We bought some beautiful wooden bowls and a couple T-shirts.

Then we tuk-tuked to Monument Books, a large bookstore with many English titles. I was hoping to find a comic book in Cambodian for a friend but I didn't find one. If you like bookstores, this is a good one to check out.

After that, we took one more stroll down 240 just in case I saw another souvenir. But we only ended up buying a couple of chocolates.

We took our last walk back to the hotel passing through the Cambodian Vietnamese Memorial Monument.

A cool creature near the actual monument

After checking out at the hotel, we went next door to Phsar Kabko. It reminded me of Sovana, filled with locals. I had a delicious sausage fried rice. The sausage was sweet and had a bacon meets salami flavor.

Hubs had pineapple pork, also very tasty.

A very violent movie played on the large TV behind my head, so that was amusing. Fried Rice + Pineapple Pork + 2 waters + tip = $7. Such a good deal.

Our hotel stay included a ride to the airport for our flight to Bangkok. I thought we would be taken on a tuk tuk, but it turned out to be a Lexus SUV. The drive to the airport ended up being through a lot of small side streets. I thought we might be taking larger roads, but I'm not sure major roads exist in Cambodia like they do in most of the world.

Cambodia might just be the most amazing place I've ever been. The unbelievable sights, the smiling people, the red clay in the road. I will never forget the beauty of the countryside and the energy of Phnom Penh.

And then we were on to Bangkok. The immigration line in Bangkok was particularly long and took about an hour to get through. Also, when we were in Thailand, 30 Baht = $1.

From the airport, we took the city line train to the BTS. I think it was 40 Baht per person, then we took the BTS to our hotel at Nara. The public transportation is pretty fantastic. I'd heard cab horror stories about Bangkok and we went to many different parts of the city and never needed or wanted a cab or tuk tuk.

We checked into our hotel On8. The room had the best bathroom of the trip. The biggest drawback of the room was that it didn't have any windows, but that's probably why we got a good deal on it. The hotel is right next to the subway, super convenient, and, probably because of no windows, was quite quiet. Plus, the included breakfast was solid.

Being fairly exhausted, we had dinner next door at Aryaa's, really good vegetarian Indian food. Hubs had Malai Kofta that was like the inside of a samosa. I had a yellow masala with paneer. Everything was the perfect comfort food and meat wasn't missed. In our exhaustion, we forgot to take photos. The meal was 700 Bht with tip. The beginning of many good meals in Bangkok.