"Shaken not stirred", or the Rith Mony experience

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Yes folks, I took the cheap way out of Battambang, electing to travel with the dreaded Rith Mony bus company. I thought Capitol ran a crappy operation but Rith Mony topped them by far!

For starters, the bus was late and then I had to get some dude's attention with sign language to be allowed to load my big backpack in the "luggage storage" which was filled with sacks of some sort. Imediately they turned on the obligatory "entertainment" which as usual was all scratched up and thus jumped and pixeled all over the screen. This time it was some "funny" stage play with screaming khmers donning shoe polish moustaches.

After riding two minutes through town we stopped and almost everybody got off to buy refreshments. This took about 15-20 minutes. There was a lot of screaming going on between the driver and passengers and quite chaotic. When we finally rolled out of town I noticed that the promised AC was only a token one. If you put your hand next to the muzzle of the AC you could feel a slight breeze - great... Well, at least I got a seat with a good view not cramped up behind some other seat - or so I thought. I was in seat number one, however, there were two guys standing infront of me and everybody had to practically climb over me when getting off.

Yes, there were a lot of stops along the way and in some places the vultures* were storming the bus when it stopped. Blocking the way for passengers wanting to leave the bus were these vultures. Some of them even climbing aboard to sell things. The driver of the bus was just leaning back in his seat and smiling.

After a while the entertainment changed from the aformentioned comedy to the wonderful karaoke-disc. After a while though, the "highway" turned really ugly due to the neverending story of construction work and we were tossed around inside the bus like popcorn in the making. The good news were that it was impossible to run the karaoke-disc with all this shaking - YES! I actually prefer i this way. I really hate those slimey videos.

So after a five hour ride (that of course was supposed to be four...) I could pull out my now completely dust covered backpack from the bottom of the bus and scratch "riding with Rith Mony" off my buckert list.

*Vendors and moto or tuk-tuk drivers

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Comments

[anonymous]

your an idiot !

[Andy L]

Sweet "anonymous"!
I thank you deeply for bringing that fact to my attention. I'm humbled by the awesome intelligence you're displaying by leaving that witty remark. I salute you and also send big wet kisses smothering your entire face!