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Published: March 8th 2007
Yes, that's right! LIVE!!! that means, I survived the bus ride to Siem Reap!!!
It was like this.... left Bangkok at 7am... nice double decker a/c bus 4 or 5 hours to Aranya Prathet (the Thai border city), we were told an a/c bus would take us to Siem Reap once we crossed into Cambodia. The thai bus was great. No complaints. The issues started immediately at the border. Now, I really want you to get an image of how the second part of the trip was.... as soon as I stepped off that nice a/c bus at a market at the border, I immediately felt like i had stepped into a movie set. After reviewing some of my videos, I discovered why i felt this way... the traffic is such chaos that it looks choreographed... there's no way that all those bikes, bicycles, tuk-tuks, hand drawn carts, wooden carts with a pedal system ran by their hands, SUPER OVERLOADED trucks or the occasional car, could possibly be driven on their own... without any accidents! Second thing I noticed: poverty. Once we got our visas and walked across the border, we were quickly welcomed/surrounded by kids begging. As I walked under the giant WELCOME TO THE KINGDOM OF CAMBODIA sign, I think I saw a dead baby. He/she could have been sleeping on the "sidewalk"... but either way, it was not an easy thing to see.
The third thing I noticed: HOT. soooo hot. I was melting. I think it must have been over 40C. plus carrying our bags across the border... once we got all our documentation in order, we waited for our nice a/c bus to save us from the heat. When it arrived, we were a bit disappointed, hardly as nice as the first bus - and the a/c were just little vents above our heads. umm... turned out that the bus was just the bus to take us to the main bus... which happened to be the most run down bus ever. the a/c was the open windows. hard plastic chairs. all the backpacks piled up in the aisle (emergency exit = window!). little cambodian kid in the middle of the aisle.
The driver told us, with limited english, something we understood as 5 hours to Siem Reap, and that it was a bit of a bumpy ride....
I was sitting with a very nice brazilian couple (ha, imagine that!), that by TOTAL coincidence are moving to Vancouver in July!! We were having a nice conversation as we started the ride...
now picture the ride: the WORST "road" I have ever seen, Dust and dirt was flying in the air, HOT, hard seats, no leg room, extremely bumpy.... turns out that to make it worse, we later found out that our bus was in fact broken! It had hit a hard bump earlier in the day and had lost its shocks or something on the front right side. That meant that we were going so slowly that the cows were almost passing us! This ride was not 5 hours long.... it was 10 or more. I lost count. Can you believe that by the last few hours, people had gotten used to the bumpiness and had fallen asleep!?! Even I was dozing near the end!!! (and i can barely sleep on the nice comfortable airplanes!)
The scenery was pretty bland. Brown was the colour. A tree only once in a while. Not even farm land, it was really more like a large construction zone. Given the history of Cambodia, this is obvious, but it is definitely something else to see it with your own eyes. Rebuilding a country... the road workers were working as long as we drove, even after sunset.... Besides the brown dry mud (that i'm thankful for, imagine this road during the wet season!!!), we passed village after village. I think this is the most poverty I have ever seen... Thailand is rich compared to this. Straw huts, naked kids running around.... Only 1 or 2 huts per village had a light on after sunset...
But even so, almost all of the kids waved happily to us as we passed!
Finally we arrived in Siem Reap. I couldn't believe my eyes... All of a sudden we had arrived in Cambodia's Las Vegas!!! It was ridiculous. Massive, beautiful, and luxurious hotel after hotel. lights on the palmtrees, green lawns... Why not take some of that water and give to the villages down the street? Anyway, we arrived at a hotel and the next thing I knew it was morning!
That was this morning... I met an english guy, Barry, and a Latvian woman (that lives in switzerland), Violeta. The three of us decided to do the Angkor temples together. We have our own tuk-tuk driver (thank god cause it is way too hot to walk!)
I took so many pictures and videos.. in fact I went and burnt them all to show you now, but this is not the quickest computer... i'm sorry. hopefully tomorrow!
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vanessa
non-member comment
Hey bonita!! I am so happy you are in Cambodia..do you remenber we spoke about a trip there? AND NOW, YOU ARE THERE!!I love reading your description of the landscape, i guess that being there makes you really put things in prospective!!I need to learn more from you and just jump to the change of travelling...not more excuses and just do it!:P It must be so inspiring to see all those people and please, don't forget to take lots of pictures if you go to a temple!! take care! Vanessa