Another travel day. After breakfast in a beautiful rooftop cafe, we hopped on a bus for the six hour journey to Phnom Penh. Cambodia must be the flattest country on earth - I saw one (small) mountain the entire time. They say in the wet season the country becomes one giant puddle and I could see why. In all the towns we passed the houses were on stilts for this very reason.

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Phnom Penh was crazy. Before we even stepped off the bus there were dozens of tuk-tuk drivers shouting over the top of each other, vying for our business. With our heads down we bypassed them all and walked to a guesthouse about ten minutes away. My first impressions of the city: busy, dirty, crowded, run down and I'll probably get hit by a car trying to cross the street. Like Siem Reap there were people trying to sell junk to us at every step, but it seemed more desperate here. 

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After dumping our luggage in our room (which we made sure had hot water this time) we walked to Wat Phnom, the biggest in the city. It was located on a tiny mound of earth (the closest they get to a hill here) in the middle of a roundabout, surrounded by a small park full of monkeys and one elephant. It was a nice change to the chaos we had battled through on the streets.

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We walked around the city searching for a restaurant for dinner, however they all appeared to be empty. We randomly found a small, open-air night market that contained a food section at one end. In the middle were dozens of colourful bamboo mats, with small bottles of condiments laid out on each. So we followed the locals: we bought relatively safe food, sat on a mat on the ground and ate our dinner. By relatively safe, I mean spring rolls, noodles and some sort of cooked bird, rather than the Cambodian delicacies of crickets, tarantulas and duck foetus. It turned out to be a good choice (the food and the location). The rest of the market mostly consisted of fake Western brands, which didn't tempt us at all.

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We arrived back at our guesthouse fairly early and sat out the front of their cafe. Within minutes I noticed a gym across the road, on the second floor of a building advertising massages. I ran over and asked how much it would be to use the gym. They replied that I was supposed to buy a massage and then get the gym for free. I just wanted the gym. The price they came up with: $4. I dashed back to our room, changed and headed over to the small but well-equiped gym. For some crazy reason I presumed the room would be air-conditioned. Nope. Not even a fan. I only lasted 40 minutes on the treadmill before I had drained all the sweat from my body and had to leave. It was a relief having somewhere to run without the risk of getting lost or run over.