Phnomenal.

The view from a roadside restaurant/rest area.

Today we ate breakfast at the hotel and then hopped in a car to Phnom Penh. Not Heng this time, we had to say goodbye to him and Son. We stopped for lunch at a pretty waterside rest area restaurant and arrived in Phnom Penh somehow at the wrong hotel. It's not a hotel chain exactly, but there are different hotels of the same name, if that makes sense. Turned out to be a great mistake though because it is a slightly fancier and newer hotel and they upgraded us to a nice big suite. Also it came with Davuth, our buddy at the concierge desk who was our primary helper setting up dinner reservations and planning our stay in Phnom Penh. I knew he was a keeper when we asked for a restaurant recommendation and he said the one restaurant I had already had in mind. Hotel score!

Our suite.

The view of Phnom Penh from our hotel rooftop.

We went out to eat and had some delicious food, and we of course had to order the famous fried tarantulas. The girl at the table near us immediately burst into tears and freaked out, I'm assuming she was crying about the giant spiders at our table, and she and her boyfriend promptly got their check and left. Adventurers only! They were fine. They taste like anything fried, but there is a bit of a psychological challenge there, and not just because of the eye contact. They still have some rubbery give to them, so when you nudge them with a fork they bounce back, which was more than a little unnerving. Frying doesn't remove all of the tiny hairs completely, either. Just something to think about when you go to bed tonight.

Then after dinner we went out to a show our hotel recommended. It was around the corner from our hotel at the National Museum, and the show was Passage of Life, demonstrating the rituals of traditional Khmer culture from birth to maturity to marriage to sickness to death. Very interesting and entertaining, and much better bang for your buck than Smile of Angkor. The cast was from a local arts community formed in the wake of Khmer Rouge, a nonprofit organization supporting traditional arts and culture. The Khmer Rouge killed about 90% of Cambodian artists, so this is a cause with no little importance and urgency to them. They were selling souvenirs and while they were pricier than we could find on the street, we had to contribute to their efforts. We support the arts!

Waving a sword while singing is a pretty cool wedding ceremony ritual.