City Comfort Before the Big Run

  Crossings always attracts my attention. Like in Phnom Penh where the city were build on the banks of three river: Tonlé Sap, Mekong and Bassac. I believe it brings coincidences, new beginnings, birth or it's simply just an energy source. It brings dynamic energy by transporting thousands of tons of water and sound with all it's ingredients. After having two days of biking from Kampot we quickly let ourselves flow in the crossing of three major rivers of Cambodia. That was what we felt like when we arrive to Phnom Penh.

  Most of the Cambodian enjoy there evenings at the shores of Tonlé Sap river where there's a lot of public attractions like self training tools and a promenade all the way the river. People usually spend their evenings here by playing games, making matches, dancing all together. making sports. jogging or simply just relax and enjoy the sunset. Culu was coming here to juggle. Behind these buildings inside the streets you can find all sorts of bars, night clubs, weirdest places you can imagine but me and Culu are not going there because it's dangerous :) NOT. Anyway, it's a very dynamic city with most of the population is young. Therefore you can always find an attraction around the streets of Phnom Penh. We find the traffic fluid. I never see Culu complaining about it. Like most of the big cities, he enjoyed riding smoothly his bike by slaloming between the cars. Yeah the city rides were quite entertaining.

  After settling up in a cheap guesthouse we can find. In this case cheap was 8 dollars. Culu took me on the bike and we went to meet a guy in a bar called "Show Box". Culu was recently mailing with this guy which we didn't know. Who was living in Phnom Penh since 4 years i guess. He's name is Özgür. He is a photographer, videographer freelancer here. Selling stock footage he shooted himself and keep on living like that. Cool guy. But we know him from his blog www.dunyabirmasaldir.com Culu wrote him few days before we arrive and he invited us to meet this bar. But as we talked at the beginning. Crossing brings coincidence and luck. When we get there there were some other people on the table that we know from Istanbul just by chance.

  We met Onur and Elodie in the bar and start staying with them right away. It would be quite another story in PP without them i should say. So since we arrive here we are staying with our great friends at the south of the city in a very quite and cool district.

  That night guys made Turkish Cig Borek since we all are craving for some turkish food sometimes.

  And it was a successful try. They ate all at once then gave me a little Lemmy size one too. It was delicious after all that time the first taste of borek was unbelievable.

  One of the purpose of visiting this city is also see a friend from Koh Kong. Ludivinne. She runs an art gallery-cafe in here with couple of her friends. Culu liked to see her place and maybe work together later on in a project. Here's Simone Art and the painted streets of Phnom Penh.

   The comfort we had since we get here, healed our body and soul before our big run. We were planning to go Laos but we didn't get the visa from here. Culu went to a travel agency to let all the job done by them. It costs us 48 dollars to apply. We couldn't get the visas at the gate because we are Turkish citizens and they don't allow us to get in that easy like most of the westerners. So after getting rejected this time we might try to go there again later.
   We were too lucky this time to have met our friends that far from home. We met great people, been in lot of weird places and at the end i can say we have studied this city. Hopefully we will come back here again.

Thanx to Elodie and Onur for their amazing support to our journey. We love you guys.