THE LONG JOURNEY TO SIEM REAP

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Our taxi turned up at 6.30 so it was another early start. We had just enough time for some breakfast before we boarded our boat, which was surprisingly large. The only other people on the boat were a French couple and with so much room we wondered why they chose the seats next to us. Later we realised it must have been just to annoy us. He couldn’t sit still or keep quiet for more than 2 minutes. When he did speak it was just to say something silly or to make funny voices while using a mango skin as a puppet. His girlfriend meanwhile stared at him adoringly and giggled like a school girl - at this point I should tell you that they were not teenagers but a couple in their 40’s!
We did stop to pick up some more people but the boat was still half empty when we got on our way.

We were told that we would arrive at lunch time so had decided to carry on to Siem Reap and hopefully get there in time to meet Pete in the evening. Crossing the border went much more smoothly than expected, with just a 30 minute wait while we all got our visas. Lunch time came and went and we realised that although we had been sold a ticket for the fast boat, we were in fact on the slow boat. We didn’t reach Phnom Penh till about 4pm.

As we got off the boat we were met by many persistent tuk tuk drivers. One in particular attached himself to us. He was convinced that even though we told him repeatedly that we didn’t need a tuk tuk we would all of a sudden realise that we did. We only managed to give him the slip when we walked into a booking office and walked out of another door when he wasn’t looking.

We found out that the next bus to Siem Reap was not until 6pm, meaning that we would arrive at midnight. Andy wanted to stay in Phnom Penh, but I wanted to continue. I thought it a much better idea to sleep on the coach and have a lay in in the morning. I knew that if we stayed in Phnom Penh we would have to get up early for the coach and arrive in Siem Reap tired and I wasn’t worried about missing out on Phnom Penh because we had to come back to catch our flights to Bangkok. It all seemed like a good idea at the time…….

We had a few hours before the coach arrived so we found somewhere with wifi and ordered a beer. We really needed to book a hotel in Siem Reap as arriving at 12am without a hotel leaves you open to being scammed by tuk tuk drivers. I found a decent hotel on line but when we tried to call it wouldn’t connect. We didn’t have time to email and wait for a reply so were very grateful when the guy at the ticket office let us use his phone and even more relieved to find that our hotel would be sending a tuk tuk to meet us at the bus station.


When the coach turned up we were very pleasantly surprised. We had got used to the Vietnamese local buses but this was a luxury air conditioned coach complete with television and toilet. It’s a shame that the roads in Cambodia are not the same standard as the transport. Getting any sleep was an impossibility. As soon as we left Phnom Penh the roads turned into endless potholes connected together by dirt tracks. It was hard enough just keeping our bums in our seats let alone sleep.

The coach toilet was in the luggage compartment. It was a very strange set up. The door was tiny, meaning the only way to get in was to crouch down and step into the cupboard. Just to make it tougher the light wasn’t working. The only light came from was a small window which let in flashes of light as traffic went by. Andy managed to navigate all this but it all sounded too complicated to me so I waited for a service station stop.

After six long bumpy hours we arrived in Siem Reap. We were exhausted and couldn’t wait to get to our hotel but because we had arrived a little early our tuk tuk driver was not there. Once again we were followed by a clingy tuk tuk driver. He followed us to the waiting area and tried to convince us that our driver wouldn’t turn up and that we should go with him instead. We stood our ground and eventually it paid off. Our driver turned up, we chucked our bags in and sat waiting to go while the two drivers were having a chat. Then we were asked to get out. It seemed that our tuk tuk had a flat tyre so we would have to wait while he got it fixed.

When our driver returned the tyre had not been repaired or replaced, instead he had just put some air in it. It was no surprise when just moments down the road the tyre deflated and we had to limp all the way to the hotel. As we bounced and bumped all the way there we longed to be back on the coach - at least that had some suspension!

When we were shown to our room we were a little disappointed. The pictures made it look lovely, but in reality they just had a really good photographer. It wasn’t dirty it was just in need of some attention. We had only booked it because the reviews were so good so we were surprised to find it was such a disappointment. We were planning on spending at least a week in Siem Reap so we wanted to be somewhere comfortable. We were pretty sure we could get more for our money so decided to move the next day, but for now all we wanted to do was crawl into bed an pass out!

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