So about Phnom Penh we didn’t really have specific plans besides just going around some temples, however we also didn’t have a lot of time, our schedule for the trip was pretty packed so we didn’t have much time, unfortunately, for museums like the National Museum of Cambodia which must’ve been really interesting, or the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The Genocide Museum I kind of deliberately skipped, I didn’t want to get depressed but back at the time i didn’t really consider that i’d hear so much about the Pol Pot regime that I might as well just go to the museum. Anyway, we started off at the Royal Palace, which, sadly, was closed. It was sooo beautiful from the outside, I’m sure it would’ve been amazing inside too. Next to the palace is the Wat Botum park, which I wanted to visit, but we were starving at the time so we skipped the park. In front of the palace a tuk-tuk driver “attacked” us with offers to show us things and places and we felt a but pressured to accept, however, we had a good excuse to deny him – we had to have lunch first. Well.. the guy wasn’t giving up and suggested that we sit at a place right next to the palace that is really good and he will wait for us and drive us around. In the end, we accepted, yes, probably the price was probably high compared to what a local would pay, but we still had to take a tuk-tuk go to between temples as a taxi service, so we might as well have someone actually drive us and show us around. Plus we didn’t really have a plan (I wasn’t very prepared for Phnom Penh), AND he showed us his “itinerary” of photos of places he would show us, and one of them was a Golden Temple, this was AMAZING, and we wouldn’t have seen it w/o him, because I didn’t even know about its existence, somehow i didn’t find it when i was doing my very little Phnom Penh research. So we sat down to eat and OH MY GOD! This place REALLY WAS THE BEST! I had the most delicious Pho (noodle soup) with shrimp in the world! AND some of the best french fries I’ve EVER HAD, not even in Europe i’ve had such fried (ok, i’m overreacting a bit, but they did rank among the best ones I’ve had in Europe). Hahaha the funny thing was the menu of the place – so the place was on a big street that continues from the palace if you keep the palace on your left side, just go straight and the place is before the next crossroad at the right corner there. The menu was basically as if a child made it – the photos of the dishes were cut with scissors so badly and glued on the paper, that you had a lot of fun reading it, also the translations were hilarious, BUT the food was really soo good! So the guide waited for us for about an hour and we went first to the Wat Phnom Daun Penh temple. We got off the tuk-tuk and you know, i’m into birdwatching and randomly I see a.. wait for it.. HORNBILL!!!!! A F*CKING HORNBILL! AAAAAAAAA!! WHAAAT! It was a wreathed hornbill! OH MY GOD!!! It was on a tree and I couldn’t see it very well but my whole, 100%, no, 200% of attention got into the mood of “Who cares about a temple when you have a HORNBILL next to you!” so i, of course began trying to take photos of it but it was very difficult until… Fill told me “There’s another one here.” with his usual matter-of-factly voice. And i looked and.. there WAS another one.. and then ANOTHER and ANOTHER, they were walking among the people, they were huuuge birds, there was a whole tree with like 20 of them, both wreathed hornbill but also Great Hornbill, I was sooo excited, nothing could make this better! Like.. nothing! But THEN!! I see something HUGE fly above, it looked like a bat but.. the size of a dog or something. And I was like WUT! What was that! And then.. I SAW IT.. a tree next to the temple covered in bats, THOUSANDS of bats and HUGE ones! It was getting dark and I couldn’t take photos but oh my god, I got even more excited, I was jumping around in awe, couldn’t believe my eyes. These were THOUSANDS of fox bats. They made a very high-pitch noise and it was soo awesome to see this. I told Fill we must come back the next day to see them in daylight, we MUST come back.. he agreed. So here comes the moment when I realized I lied about the guy, i thought he brought us to the other temples, but we only got his services to that temple, so he indeed waited for us and got us to the temple and that was it. Because it was indeed getting dark, so we only walked around the Wat Phnom temple that day. We did the tour with another guy the next day, whom we met when we came back to see the bats. While I was taking photos of the bats, Fill spoke to a tuk-tuk driver who offered the itinerary I mentioned earlier. When the driver of the tuk-tuk asked if we’ve seen this and that and the answer to everything was “no”, he said we didn’t see anything so he insisted that we go with him. We got on the tuk-tuk and he brought us first to the Golden Temple, the Siam Mongkol Temple. This temple is so rich in detail, so mesmerizing to look at. The driver also took us to see the statue of President Sihanouk and the Independence monument right next to that. He also bought some drinks for us from a local seller on the road and for 1 USD he got 3 drinks whereas if we bought ourselves, we’d give 3 dollars for 3 drinks, they charge foreigners 1 USD per drink 😀 I mean it’s still cheap for us and it’s ok, but you know.. they cheat the tourists. They have also built an island in Western European style, which, the guide said, is a very expensive place to live. I’d say it was pretty ugly, considering what you can see in France etc, but of course, for them, it’s quite different and makes sense that it’d be expensive.