Well our extra long stay in Phnom Penh was worth it and we're now all visa'd up for the rest of our trip. The Vietnamese one was so easy, drop it off in the morning (with form, money and photos)and pick it up in the afternoon, that we felt brave enough to try the Chinese one too. You hear so many horror stories about how difficult it is to get with lots of proof etc. that we thought we'd use the hotel's visa service. It was a little disconcerting - we just gave them our passports, photos and cash with no form or proof or anything , they just had a chat with their contacts and asked us a few questions and we waited. Now we weren't sure what was happening but the passports came back today with visas in a very painless experience so we're pretty chuffed.
Cambodia does quite well in surreal experiences. We hard about this shooting range (well all the tuk tuks sell it) and Dave decided he fancied having a go (no, he doesn't grow up). We must have driven about an hour when we entered a Special Forces Compound with the gate opened by a guy carrying a meat cleaver as you do. We pulled up at the place and got handed a menu of guns - Dave chose the AK-47 of course... - then he got taken across to a rough concrete tunnel type thing where the guy slapped in a magazine and grunted 'shoot' then a little later did a little adjustment 'automatic' and then when the magazine was finished 'more'. And that was it - that was all he said. The whole thing took less than 10 minutes - it was competely surreal and highly amusing!
Carying on with the surreal theme was when we were looking round the Royal Palace, where it was full of school kids on a trip and some of them came up to us asking for a photo. We thought they meant for us to take one of them, but no - they wanted them with us...!
We finally leave Phnom Penh tomorrow with our passports (with visas) in hand and head down to the coast to see some more of Cambodia.
Sarah
xxx
