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January 20, 2006
Off to Cambodia...
With only a few days left in Chiang Mai there was a bit of pressure to square things off before leaving: pack up and ship home newly purchased stuff, come to a stopping point with Child’s Dream and the web site, and organize my last few weeks in Asia. Except for shipping a 10kg box back to Zurich for 2200 Baht, I failed at everything. The web site is going to need my intermittent attention for the next week or so. I have lost my UBS ATM card. (Now I’m on the backup Credit Suisse ATM card.) My plans from here on out include only 4200 Baht return tickets form Bangkok to Phnom Penh, a Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia flight to Macau in mid-February, and a two night reservation at the Kowloon New World Renaissance for my last two night in Hong Kong. Everything else is a mess and I’ve got some hard dates to work with.
After over a day of trying to get the Bank of Bangkok to open up their ATM machine for me to look for my card (successfully searched but no card) I just had to get down to Bangkok for my Thursday morning flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. 
That meant a Wednesday evening 1900 VIP night bus for a whopping 780 Baht—nearly double the train fare. But the ride in seat A7 on the air conditioned 30 seat Mercedes-Benz was comfortable enough with its wide seats to get maybe four hours of sleep. The driver even dropped me off right at the airport, which he was not supposed to do, at about 4am. My check in time was at 5:30am so I just sorta cruised the terminal for a while before check in. That gave me enough time to sort out my 2200 Baht VAT return for the replacement camera, grab a bite to eat, and check the internet for hotels/guesthouses in Phnom Pehn.
After sleeping most of my Bangkok Airways flight PG920 away in seat 17D, we landed in Cambodia. The US$20 visa-on-arrival process was quick despite being so poorly organized. Next was immigration, baggage claim, customs and a US$7 taxi to the Dara Reang Sey Hotel where, in room 102, I’ve got air conditioning, cable TV, the best hot shower I’ve seen in months and a broken refrigerator. Oh, well. By 10am I was fast asleep again. At 3pm I awoke with a major headache and sore throat—Pam back in Chiang Mai was ill and now it seems I’ve picked up her disease. Super. I grab some food downstairs at the Guesthouse kitchen (cheese omelet, French bread with jam) and head back to bed to watch TV, read the latest issue of the Economist, and try to sleep my illness away.
Posted by stu at January 20, 2006 03:43 PM