James and Jo’s south east Asia adventure

As the holiday neared its conclusion there was a shift towards a greater proportion of our time spent ‘at leisure’. On our last full day we went to the nearby ‘Wat Phnom’ for an hour or so in the morning. It’s a religious site contained within a well-maintained park and the temple on the top of the hill is the highest religious point in Phnom Penh. Whilst we were walking around the park we saw a flock of hornbills that are known to frequent the place.

We spent the rest of the day at the pool before having dinner at the hotel restaurant. With it being the start of Pchum Ben, an important 15 day festival in the Cambodian calendar, the hotel had arranged for an evening performance of traditional Khmer dance, which we had forgotten about. Three dancers would perform for a couple of minutes every half an hour or so from 7. We were seated closer to the performers than any of the other guests but thankfully not right at the base of the stage, so they didn’t have to contend with the potentially off putting close-up sight of me smearing the contents of my Wagyu burger across my face whilst they were concentrating on performing.

The restaurant manager seemed to have taken a special interest in us, and after a five minute monologue on the importance of the palm tree to the Cambodian people insisted that we have a Khmer palm-based dessert. It was reasonably nice, but neither of us felt the need to have a dessert after starter and main, and wouldn’t have opted for that even knowing how it tasted.