A mini van picks us up at 6:30 to take us to the harbour to board the Siem Reap to Phnom Penh boat. First we are dropped at a narrow boat with about 8 seats, this proceeds for about 15 minutes through a floating village to the open water of the Tonle Sap lake. The floating village is very interesting as there are floating houses and houses on stilts on either side of the riverbank, including shops, schools and even a police station. On the boat we meet a Scandinavian couple whom we had previously met on the Ko Samet boat, small world! (or more likely, all backpackers follow the same well trodden route around the world!).

At the lake we transfer to a bigger, faster boat for the rest of the journey to Phnom Penh. All the backpackers decide to sit on the roof which seems a good idea, so we settle down for the journey and the boats accelerates to cruising speed. It takes a couple of hours to traverse the lake, in the middle it is like being at sea as you cannot see any land.

After the lake the route takes us down the Tonle Sap river which eventually flows through downtown Phnom Penh, where it meets the Mekong River. Arriving in Phnom Penh and it is total chaos whilst we try to unload our rucksacks and find a taxi to take us to the hotel. We are inundated with offers of hotels, taxis, motos, rickshaws etc, at one point there is a crowd of about 10 such touts surrounding us fighting for our custom, we take the usual approach and ignore them all. Outside the chaos of the ferry landing we find a taxi driver who drops us at various hotels, we eventually end up at the Indochine hotel ($15 a night) on the waterfront.

In the afternoon we visit the National Museum which is a short walk from the hotel. The Museum is housed in a grand building but contains a pretty sporadic, dusty collection of antiquities. Predictably there is lots of Angkor stuff and interestingly some stuff recovered from Europe and the States that was looted from the Angkor Temples (some organization published a book of 100 antiquities that were looted, this publication led to the recovery of 8 of them which were on display in the Museum).

Dinner is at Taramund, a Mediterranean restaurant, we then decide to walk back to hotel, and on the way pass various temples and the royal palace. We then spend an exciting evening sorting out our photographs and have an early night.