We had to find our Tuk Tuk driver and finally found him hammock bound in the shade of a bar. Check out his ball cap. That's why I picked him even though he had no clue who the Pgillies were;).
On the ride back towards town we were both quiet.
O. (Our tailgating Tuk Tuk dude)We did decide however to head toward the Grand Palace area so I could get a tequila and have a chance to breathe. We were dropped in a backpacker area of town which had plenty of bars (with happy hours signs) and restaurants. We decided on a pizza shop which advertised margaritas for $1.50/ea.
As the owner placed the perfect margarita on the perfectly placed sidewalk table, Pete and I chose a veggie pie.
The gentleman asked, "you want Happy pizza?".
We both responded "yes!".
A happy pizza apparently comes with a kick.
No, not extra veggies or even hot pepper. A happy Pie is a canabis pie!
After a refill on my tequila beverage and a few Kind words with the proprietor and his staff, we were on our way in a Tuk Tuk to the other side of town to retrieve our passports and our Vietnam & Laos - multi-entry visas. The agency was closing and we were to pick them up by 6.
We only had another 5-6 hours before the students would be arriving to the hotel.
I had helped to arraigned a private mini-taxi-bus to pick us up in the morning. We are to depart our hotel at 10 am and be in Ban lung, a 8+ hour drive northeast by dinner.
The director of the NGO had big plans for our group to celebrate New Year's Eve & wanted us there early enough to organize.
Problem was, the happy Pie was kicking in!
With passports and new visas in our hands, we spent the next 4 hours walking down the dark dusty streets of Phnom Penh looking for anything we could justify eating to satisfy our insatiable munchies.
Ice Cream? No, not a big seller, ice cream in the back neighboorhoods. Bakery, Yes! We bought $20 worth of cakes, cookies and sweets.
Wtf was in the pizza sauce? We was stoned, immaculate!
We ultimately got a good noodle dish at a sidewalk gourmet and foggily found ourselves back in the hotel room (with umpteen bags of baked goods.
There were only a couple of hours left before I expected a call from the front desk to inform me that my students had arrived.
I decided that it was imperative that I lay down and take a power nap before I have to greet a professor and 11 engineering students with the intention to lay out tomorrow morning's schedule.
I woke at 12:50 am to the phone ringing. "Your group has arrived, sir", the pretty foreign voice announced.
Wow! "I'm wasted", I thought out loud. I threw on a shirt and floated down the 4th floor hallway to the elevator.
As the doors parted I found myself staring at a dozen 20+ year olds with barely a feeling between my ears.
I think I said something like, "High! Wassup guys?!". All I could think of is "God, please let me make it back to my room before someone notices how F'd up I am".
Don't ask me how it happened but somehow after a mumbled/fumbled and potentially stumbled attempt to communicate with my fellow professor, who had arrived with the group, I was back in my bed hoping to make up for whatever embarrassing items I displayed with my new tour group in the morning.
It was just a normal looking pizza! But boy did it have a Kind punch!
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