After staying in Phnom Penh another 3 full days it was time to move again. Phnom Penh seemed to be becoming too hot a place too. Two nights ago there were 5 people shot in Phnom Penh – apparently for their motorbikes. A policeman was subsequently shot to the head by one of the thieves they were chasing. A buddy of this thief took the other policemen’s gun and disappeared in the crowd on the street. I wrote to Tanja about this, assuring her at the same time that this type of news was not on daily order – at least so I was told. Last night, however, there was at least one other person shot in Phnom Penh. How do I know? Well, it happened just a couple hundred meters from my guesthouse. We heard the shot and then saw a mob surrounding an area where a police car and an ambulance were standing as me and Steve were heading off to visit a couple of people and an Internet café. One of the 5 people shot the night before was also shot nearby, on the corner of a block two blocks from us… Thanks god my mother can’t speak English. She would buy me a flight ticket home straight away if she read this… :-)

Just to give you an idea how a street in the centre of Phnom Penh looks like here is a photo of my guesthouse.

Before I loaded the bike I went to a petrol station to re-fuel and on the way back to the guesthouse I got my first fine on this journey. I was apparently not supposed to turn left from the main street. The policemen first wanted a pack of Coke and eventually, since I wasn’t sure how much could such a pack cost and where to get it, they got the last five dollars I had in my wallet off me. I thought that five bucks was not too bad until I talked to Johny (one of the teachers in the guesthouse) who told me that the locals pay about 2000 Riels, which is only 50 cents. Well, next time I’ll be thinking in local costs rather than comparing the charge with what I would pay in Australia. But no really, doesn’t 50 cents sound too little as a fine even for such a poor country as Cambodia? You won't even buy 1 liter of petrol for that. Well, I guess it all goes to the policemen themselves as they don’t issue any receipt (I saw them giving a fine to a Cambodian as well).

I had a “perfect” timing for my departure today. Instead of leaving as soon as possible in the morning I only managed to be about to leave at 1PM, after I visited a post office where I hadn’t been in almost two months. By the way, posting anything from Cambodia will cost you considerably more than from the surrounding countries. (I sent my packages from Laos after that for ¼ of the price in Cambodia.) The clouds were already moving in by then but I was discussing possible routes to get where I needed to get (the Cambodia – Laos border) with Philippe and his map of Cambodia. By the time we were finished it started to rain and before I managed to insert my waterproof lining into my jacket it was pouring down. I left in the full strength of the monsoonal rain. The good thing about monsoonal rains is that they don’t usually last too long. They manage to soak you well though.

I ran into a few more downpours on the way and missed – if you can miss something that is in fact not really there – a dirt road along the Mekong river that would have saved me about 80 kilometers of riding. Although longer, the other way is sealed almost the whole way so it might actually have been faster at the end, as the dirt road along Mekong is reported to be very bumpy. And I got to see a pretty temple on my way... :)

Better or not I have still arrived to my destination – Kracheh – in the dark and in the middle of another downpour. Fortunately the first guesthouse I found looked very good in comparison with a couple of other ones that I checked out before having a dinner after the rain stopped. In this first guesthouse I bargained the price down to only USD 2.50. I even have a TV in my room for the first time on my journey. It was a cable TV so after I returned from the dinner where I talked to a couple of other travelers for a couple of hours I watched a movie in English. I haven’t seen anything on TV for over 3 months.

(320km)