We don't want to leave Cambodia

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23rd April 2006

Eventually, after much deliberation, heart ache, and the realisation that we could not stay here forever, we actually managed to leave Cambodia. This was no easy feat. First of all because we really didn’t want to leave. Not one bit. Second we really didn’t want to leave the great people and friends that we had made in Kim, Big Tiger and Sonny. After having yet another great night in Garden Village Guesthouse, and a pre-emptive celebration of Martin’s birthday, involving a pancake with some candles (it was too small for 23 candles) and a few jugs of Angkor Beer, we awoke the next morning feeling a little special and sad that we had to leave this wonderful place. This was the first place on our travels that we had really taken our time over and had the chance to fully settle in. Before this we had been moving so fast and needing to cover such huge distances that we didn’t have time to relax and get to know the people and the place well. This is mind we had spent alot of time here and had to make the executive decision to not go back to Phnom Penh and to head straight to Thailand instead.

We are deviating from the subject here just a smidge and the subject is the road out of Cambodia into Thailand which is quite possibly one of the worst roads in the world! In addition, the bus was one of the smallest and shittiest either of us had ever seen. It was ridiculously cramped, with no leg room at all. To add to this the bus kept on filling up. Just when you though it was impossible to add more people the bus would stop at another guesthouse and even more people would get on fully loaded with baggage . With the bus having a boot the size of a badger’s rectum the luggage gets piled wherever there is space, which mostly meant on top of or under people. We didn’t realise until the end of the journey that our bags were being used as seats at the back! However, all is not lost, you do get a free massage for the entire journey as you bounce up and down on your seat for hours! During all this you can open the window and inhale pure dust if that floats your boat. Asphalt… who needs asphalt? Real roads are for pussies….. Its all about the dirt tracks and pot holes big enough to accommodate entire ecosystems. This may seem ridiculous but the roads in Cambodia are really that bad. You can see that they are trying their best to fix them. The country is just so small and so poor that having a decent road is the last thing on their minds when they have half the population under the age of 15 and millions of them living in absolute poverty. Read up on the history of the country and you might just be able to begin to understand the state of recovery that it is going through.

After much bouncing, jumping and inhalation of dust we arrived at the border crossing. Border crossings at weekends in 40 degrees of blistering heat are not good! It took us around 3-4 hours to eventually cross the border back into Thailand. The first thing we did, being back on Thai turf was to hook ourselves up with some Beer Chang! We had missed its succulent taste and ridiculous alcohol content. Back on the bus to Bangkok we both chilled and slept until we arrive back in the crazyness that is Khoa San Raod.

It was Martin’s birthday that night at twelve so we hooked up a guesthouse and some cheap food and settled in for a night of beer. We also met our Thai friends, with Wine and Jesse coming down to meet us for a drink. We also reunited with Thierry, who was an amazing French dude we met at Garden Village. He was at the end of an epic journey and we shared stories and discussed the world and life itself until the sun started to rise and it was eventfully time to go to bed.

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Photos

Garden Village
an amazing guesthouse

Kim and Martin
come on England!

Siem Reap
the last piece of tarmac

Comments

[Vron Lyons]

On My List to Visit.
So enjoying your descriptions, sounds a wonderful country. If you make Indonesia visit Borabador an amazing temple complex.