Phnom Penh - Villa Paradiso Spa

This post is overdue, the wonderful guest house and Spa here in Phnom Penh

 I did a quick walk through to our room, sorry I didn't really get the pool area because people were using it and that would be creepy.

The place is amazing.  I'll have to get a few pictures of the pool area when its vacant.  Unbelievable.  We spent an hour or two soaking in the pool yesterday to escape the heat. 

There are some pictures on their Web site here

Phnom Penh more Tuk'n Around

Phnom Penh by Tuk Tuk

Enjoy the ride from Vibol as we head down to the riverfront for lunch, we pass the Royal Palace and grounds!

Russian Market

After taking a Tuk Tuk over to Bernie's bike shop to finish our paperwork, Bernie introduced us to his favourite Tuk Tuk driver "Vibol"  pronounced Vee-ball.

Awesome friendly dude that we have hired for the day to take us sight seeing.  First stop was the Russian Market.  There wasn't any Russians there, but there was lots and lots of vendors hawking everything imagineable.  It is organized into areas, some are jewelry, pants, shirts, scooter parts etc... 

The most memorable is the fish and meat section.  You can't smell it in this video, but the hot damp air was thick with the smell of raw, live, and dead, fish.  We motored over to the clothing section where there was a light breeze and some incense burning.  Phew!

Next up, more Tuk Tuk-ing!

Day 2 Walking Around Town

We decided to go see a little bit of our neighbourhood.  It was pretty hot, so we found a store that sold a couple bottles of water.  It was at a gas station, around the corner from Villa Paradiso, and was an organic food mart.  Continuing around the block, my eagle eyes spotted a street vendor selling cold beer!  We picked up a 6 pack with ice for $3.00 !!

We dropped our loot off at our room fridge and went to explore Pasteur street some more.  Walking past many scooter/moped wash bays and repair district we came to a part of the street that had some pubs and restaurants.  In this video, we are down near a marketplace and Steve spots "My Lien Bar" which he found quite funny.  There was also "Chuck Norris Dimsum" lol!  We didn't eat the dimsum, but I'm sure it kicked ass!

Cambodian currency

Most transactions here in Phnom Penh are in US dollars.  We bought a couple pops in a corner store when we were out walking this morning, and since they don't use US coins, you get change in their own currency Riel.

The beer in this picture is the major national brand Angkor.  A nice light lager that goes down nice on a hot day

Phnom Penh airport arrival

The heat strikes you immediately upon deplaning in Phnom Penh airport.  We're in Cambodia baby!!!

We made our way to the customs area and had no issues since we had pre-registered ourselves with an e-Visa.  We sweated away waiting for our bags, and once our gear had been retrieved it was off to find our ride.

The place we are staying, Villa Paradiso, sent a fellow to pick us up.  Here you can see some of the exit from the airport, and the smiling face of our driver.  Lots of smiling faces in Phnom Penh (PP), we find the people we have met so far to be very gentile and genuinely happy to meet and help tourists.