After all the sight seeing since the beginning of our trip, we were ready for some downtime. So we spent the day sitting by the pool, reading and doing absolutely nothing but the occasional dip. The hotel is very lovely with spacious rooms and 2 enormous pools. It is very quiet and most of the time we have the whole pool area to ourselves.
After a strenuous day of swimming to the pool bar for the occasional beer, we got dressed up to go out. We decided to go for a swanky restaurant called Malis. It is a beautiful colonial style building surrounding a lily pond.
We had a crispy noodle salad served with sliced pork, a Cambodian style beef carpaccio, fish amok ( the local dish) that is a river fish coconut flavoured curry steamed in a banana leaf and Saraman beef , a slow cooked beef curry in coconut milk.
We washed it down with a bottle of Pinot Grigio. A very tasty and up market meal. Expensive by Cambodian standards but still only $90 in total. We're worth it!
After dinner we went for a walk around one of the night markets. It was quite hot and humid, especially after a lovely air conditioned restaurant , so we then got a tuk-tuk back to the hotel.
We got up a bit earlier this morning for another wonderful and varied breakfast. We considered 'doing something' but decided we were happy to have another day lounging by the pool. It was deserted again and we had the pool to ourselves most of the day.
We managed to FaceTime Rachel and my dad. Rachel has been in Prague for the weekend but got home to a very cold house. The boiler had lost pressure but Rachel did not realise there was a problem until the middle of the night our time. The house was 11 degrees - she was so cold. She contacted us when she woke up this morning and we managed to give her instructions to reset the pressure. Hot water has returned, but it may take a while for the house to get back up to some liveable kind of temperature! We've just checked Nest and it is creeping up, currently 13 degrees.
On our second night here, we bought a bottle of gin and some tonics. I foolishly though that we would need to save some water bottles to take it with us to our next hotel, after all we only have another 3 nights here. I think we managed 1/2 of it within 24 hours of purchase. Simon said we need to keep our fluid intake up! We should have enough for another tipple tonight and that will finish it off!
This evening, our plan was to find a nice, but not so swanky restaurant. After a couple of beers in Pub street, we went to a place called Champeys. We over ordered -chicken and aubergine soup, chicken satay, pork and cashew nuts, red beef curry, rice, a bottle of Aussie Chardonnay and a bottle of water. All for $60 -a fabulous meal yet again.
We then wandered to another night market that we had not ventured to yet for a bit of shopping. We finished the night off with fried ice cream rolls. Basically they take sugar syrup, milk and flavouring (in our case, fresh coconut) and they beat the hell out of it on a cold plate with 2 wallpaper scrapers. Then they spread it out thinly and roll it into curls, put the rolls in a tub and add toppings of choice, nutella for us. I have seen it in Selfridges, but i think they charge a little more than $2.
We have not complained about the roads or driving in Cambodia, that is because they are nowhere near as mad! They seem to have some road sense. The tuk-tuk drivers take care and make sensible road decisions.
We have really enjoyed Cambodia, even though it was a short visit. We love the food, the driving, the people, and the price of beer.
We leave this idyllic hotel tomorrow morning for Phu Quoc. We will be travelling most of the day, 2 flights of an hour each but a 3 hour lay over in Ho Chi Minh City. We can have a leisurely breakfast, pack and then get picked up at 11:30 to go to the airport.
So back to Vietnam ... see you in Phu Quoc!