Royal Palace, silver flooring, and a touch of bling (Sian)

On arrival in Pnom Phen we decide to check out some of the sites around the city.
Phom Phen seems like a lively city with lots of smiling faces. I found this really suprising considering what the people of this country have been through in the last 30 or so years.
One of the main hot spots here is the Royal Palace, after the bling spectacular of Bangkok our expectations were very high. The Khmer Royal family still live in the palace, unfortunately we were not invited for tea as they have a very special closed off section.
The grounds of the palace are lovely though, it's all cute flower beds, green grass and shrubbery's. What stands out like a sore thumb is a grey French building, given as a gift by Napoleon III. This building is placed directly in front of a spectacularly beautiful throne room, why it needed to be put there is anyone's idea!
We had read about the Royal Pagoda with tiled silver flooring, each tile weighing 1kg each. The floor is spectacular, however we only got to see part of it as most of the Pagoda is covered in red carpet and is used as a home for an emerald Buddha and a museum. It was interesting though.
Walking around the palace grounds are dozens of friendly Monks who came up and talked to us, one Monk even wanted his photo taken with Steve. This is the first time in our travels that Monks have spoken to us, suprising really as we have seen hundreds of them I am sure.
On our way out of the palace we were treated to a show of traditional Khmer dancing by some really cute looking children. The dance and the music was very sutle, everything seemed to flow together in almost one smooth movement. The used sticks to keep the time and a sitar for the melody. The children were dressed in brightly coloured clothes with stunning gold ornaments in their hair.
The palace was not quite as bling as Bangkok's Royal Palace, but was still weigh more sparkly than anything the British Royalty have had built.

On leaving the palace we come across a bar called the ginger monkey, run by a Brit. He sells decent Red wine, (the first Merlo we've found since leaving the uk!) and Bangers and Mash... guess what we had for tea?!