Happy Birthday Jen day!

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

It's always a bit weird being somewhere different on your birthday, it didn't feel a lot like a birthday but we had a good day...

I'd read in our guidebook about a non-profit restaurant (called Friends) that is run by street kids being trained in the hospitaltiy industry, the review said it was clean and the food was good. I wanted to go their for my b-day lunch so go there we did!
It was fantastic! Probably the best meal we've had all trip. The menu is tapas style so you can order lots of small dishes. We had - houmus on crispy wontons, chicken Khmer curry, fish with salsa verde, prawn in crispy wonton parcels, pork&beef honey meatballs, chilli beef pastry pockets and some rice & french bread.
It was so yummy! The teenagers serving us were brilliant too, they did everything you'd expect from a good/posh restaurant - there were teachers on hand but they didn't seem to need them. It was a good start to the day.

Coming to Cambodia, you can't really ignore the terrible war torn history that the country has had and it seemed like the right thing to do to visit Tuol Sleng - the Genocide Museum. They have kept the high school were Pol Pot & his cronies kept thousands of people prisoner and have turned it into the museum. It's full of haunting mugshots of the victims, alongside other photo exhibitions that tell the stories of individuals involved on both sides of the prison. We didn't know much about the Khmer Rouge before we went, and I'm not sure we know that much more now but it was worth a visit to realise the attrocity. We didn't really fancy the killing fields though- too depressing.

We visited the Royal Palace after the museum. It was quite nice, the usual kinds of temples and shoe taking off! Had some very pretty bits and some quite dowdy bits - far less brash than Bangkok.

It seemed that it must be time for a cocktail so we went back to the main bar street and played some cards while I sipped a gin fizz! Had a quick look on the internet for birthday greetings - Thank you!
Seemed like time for a 2nd cocktail - the food looked ok in the Cantina bar so we had a bit of mexican food while I drank my Cosmopolitan!

We had been tempted to go back to Friends for dinner but didn't know what we'd have as we'd eaten half the menu for lunch, but we did decide to go there for pudding (& 3rd cocktail!) What a good decision - Chris had a lovely crepe with choc sauce & ice cream, and I had pineapple in toffee sauce with icecream, all washed down with frozen lime daquiris.

Excellent!