Day 40 of The Big Adventure, according to Sarah (let’s just assume it’s Sarah from now on, unless specified otherwise). 
  
The next 6 hours seemed to pass pretty quickly (I must have fallen asleep at some point) because the next thing I knew the bus was coming to a stop and there seemed to be some sort of commotion.

I took my earphones out of my ears and heard, what I thought was, the man opposite vomming. The place absolutely stank. I looked over at Lauren and mouthed ‘Is he…?!’ 

Lauren’s face said it all. 

She’d had to listen to it all night, the poor thing.

I noticed the couple from the bunk above us were gathering their things and getting off the bus. From our previous chit chat, I knew they were headed to Siem Reap too so we followed them. 

Thankfully we had arrived in one piece, and (after a little inspection of our bags) with all our belongings in tact. 

The girl from above us asked if we wanted to share a tuktuk as we were both headed the same way. 

So we all clambered in and drove off to the main city. 

  
The bus stations always seem to be located out of the main city centre, and I’m pretty sure the bus companies are in cahoots with the tuktuk drivers so that when a bus drops you, you always have to pay another $5 for a tuktuk to get where you actually want to go. It’s really rather annoying. 
 We arrived at Velkommen Guesthouse to be greeted by a friendly (but slightly dopey) receptionist/owner, who checked us in and told us our room was ready now so we wouldn’t have to wait until 2pm to check in. We had never been more grateful. 
He showed us up to our room and after a quick shower, we both got straight into bed for a nap. 

We awoke at around 12 to find our tummies grumbling. Next on the agenda: lunch. 

We consulted trusty Foursquare and found a highly recommended vegetarian restaurant across the river from us. 

  So we strolled over to Peace Cafe and ordered a bowl of chips for Lauren and a sundried tomato salad for me.

After a few chips, Lauren’s stomach was telling her no more. She said it was such a strange feeling because she so wanted to eat and she could feel she was hungry and yet her stomach was still saying no. Having experienced this earlier in the trip, I knew exactly what she was going through and told her to just wait it out and it would soon pass and she’d be back to normal in no time. 

We sat there in the beautiful gardens of Peace and took in our surroundings. 

We decided to go to the famous night markets that evening so we looked up where to go and decided we’d probably need a tuktuk. We bumped into a very friendly man from our hostel who said he was thinking about going to the night markets too and asked if he could join us. So we said ‘of course’ and we all bundled into a tuktuk. It turned out he was from Taiwan and had a name that sounded like a cross between chorizo and Lorenzo. He took a selfie (obviously)…

  We arrived at the night markets and had a wander around the streets. Everything was lit up with beautiful fairy lights and bunting as the Khmer New Year was coming up. 

There were stalls and stalls selling the same old stuff we’re used to seeing: elephant print t-shirts, canvas paintings, candle holders, soap, fake jewels, etc. 

We wandered around for a while and passed some interesting food options; one of which was fried ice cream rolls. Interesting. 

We watched as some other people ordered and I decided to try some. It, infact, wasn’t fried at all. They started by mixing cream and sugar together. Then they added the flavouring you wanted (I went for banana) so he chopped up a few bananas and added them to the mix. Then he spread the mixture over a large place that was a very low temperature. And spread it out and then mixed it all together a few times and then after five minutes he spread the mixture so there was a thin layer all over and then used a little chisel-like utensil to scrap it into rolls. It was such a strange idea but I supposed it was basically them making fresh ice cream. It was super yummy! 

  
  
Then we decided to head back to the guesthouse as Lauren was feeling a little weak and I don’t think she was appreciating our new Taiwanese friend. 

So we headed home and got into bed.