James and Jo’s south east Asia adventure

The hotel had a fairly generous check out time of midday and as our flight wasn’t until 7 there was no rush. The restaurant manager the evening before asked if we’d had the Khmer soup for breakfast yet from the dedicated station yet, we hadn’t, and after confirming that he was also working the breakfast shift we knew what we would be having. To be fair it was very nice, although we had had a lot of noodle dishes by this point.

After checking out we decided to stay within the boundaries of the hotel to try and reduce the prospect of sweating too much given we wouldn’t be able to shower for another 30 hours or so. We spent a couple of hours in a somewhat shaded area by the pool. It appeared that there had been an influx of new guests as the pool area was much busier than it had been on any other day, including a load of kids. Spending these last couple of hours by the pool made us even more appreciative of the tranquility we had enjoyed during our downtime the previous few days.

As we approached the newly opened and modern-looking airport that had been part-funded by China there was overt evidence of the Chinese “belt and road” initiative in practice as we crossed Xi Jinping boulevard. There were also acres of churned up land where Chinese-funded builders had laid the groundwork before the construction had ceased for whatever reason, leaving a mess and eyesore for the Cambodians.

Despite some reservations prior to leaving that perhaps going at the tail end of the rainy season was not the best time to visit we actually had relatively little rain over the course of the whole two weeks. We had a great time in every city and possibly even benefited from some places not being saturated with tourists, we couldn’t t have asked for things to be much better.