Paul's birthday debacle...

We first arrived in Phnom Penh on Tuesday 7 April. Because Wednesday 8 April was Paul's birthday, we decided to spring for a better hotel for a couple of nights and booked a room at the Bougainvillier Hotel on 10 and 11 April. We were quite excited at the thought of spending Paul's "birthday week" not worrying about money.

We woke up on the morning of Paul's birthday having planned to get massages and go shopping in air conditioned comfort in one of the big shopping centres in Phnom Penh. Unfortunately, Paul decided to check his laptop before we left in the morning and when he opened it up he saw the screen had been cracked!! It must have happened in the bus as it was in his backpack in the luggage compartment and may have gotten banged around.

That meant that the morning of his birthday was spent ringing the insurance company and figuring out how to get the laptop fixed. Despite this mishap we still managed to have a good day and squeezed in some shopping and a massage before going for a sunset cruise on the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers followed by dinner at a French restaurant. The river cruise was really nice and could have been quite romantic if Paul didn't ask me "If a cow died in the Mekong in Laos, could it float all the way down to Phnom Penh?"!!!

Unfortunately, Paul's bad luck hadn't ended with the computer!! That night we found bed bugs crawling all over Paul's bed in the hostel. We asked to move to a new room but the hostel said they were fully booked. By this time it was past midnight so we didn't have much choice but to stay. The hostel took the bed away and gave poor Paul a campbed!! Then during the night Paul got really sick and threw up! So much for the lovely French dinner.

The next day Paul was still feeling terrible with the tummy bug but we had to move hostels because of the bed bugs - there was still one night before we were due to check into the fancy hotel. Paul spent that day pretty much out of action and he couldn't even finish the two slices of birthday cake I bought him the day before :(

The next day we had to go and apply for a Vietnamese visa at the embassy. We decided to go straight to the embassy to get our visa instead of getting one of the numerous tour companies in town to arrange it for us as we figured it would be cheaper. So, we arranged to get a tuk tuk there and back (to our hotel) for US$4. Alas!! When we got there we realised the embassy was closed between 11.30am - 2.30pm!! There was a cop stationed out front who had a stack of application forms and offered to process our visa for us but we were somewhat suspicious so we elected to come back during opening hours. Thwarted, we arranged for the tuk tuk driver to take us to the Tuol Sleng (S21) museum for an hour or so while we waited for the embassy to open again.

When we finally started back to the embassy we realised that we had forgotten our headshots for our visa application!!!! So, it was all the way back to the hotel to get our photos and then back to the embassy. This jacked the price of the tuk tuk up to US$7. Aaargh! When we finally got back to the embassy we realised that the price of the visa was US$35 anyway - which seemed to be what the tour companies charged anyway!! I don't know how they make money... Anyway, hopefully our visas will be waiting on Monday morning for us. We have elected 18 April as our entry date to Vietnam.

Even the two nights in the (vastly overpriced) fancy hotel were kind of ruined cos he was still feeling sick and couldn't take full advantage of the buffet breakfast. Also, true to form, he had decided he wanted to go to a seafood buffet for his birthday and the only hotel in town which seems to do one is Raffles Hotel Le Royal. Being sick, he couldn't really get his US$30 worth! Oh well, it was still nice... I had to go out and buy a new outfit just so they wouldn't kick me out (they have a dress code, you know).

After a week of mishap and misadventure he last night agreed to take some medicine out of the veritable pharmacy I have been carrying around in my bag. Hopefully this will soon fix him up! - N