Bus journey to Cambodia March 2012 . Wot a laugh !

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So that was my taste of Vietnam , really wish now in hindsight I had stayed longer, but I was still concerned about keeping to a schedule, well a rough schedule .. this schedule got thrown out of the window shortly afterwards after I developed a go with the flow and don´t care when I get home attitude, just wish I had this attitude in India and Vietnam , never mind but I am sure I will return one day .. in fact I know I will !

So where to go next ? Well my geography of the area was pretty poor and I was pleasently suprised to see that Cambodia was not to far away from HCM so I decided to go there ..via bus.

Now I am a tourist , but I no way consider myself a typical tourist . I knew I wanted to go to Cambodia with a bus and I saw plenty of the old buses going to and from various destinations packed to the gunwales with Asians and their belongings . So a quick search of google I found the bus service.

Now a lot of people do this trip von HCM to PP ( Phnom Penh) but all take a super modern all singing all dancing luxery air.con bus service . I did not want this.

So off I go to the ticket office and ask for a ticket to PP . They tried to flog me the luxery service but I was determined to go peasent class , and peasent class I did go ! It cost peanuts about 8US$ I think for a maybe 6 hour bus journey.

As expected the bus was an old banger , no aircon , packed with people and animals,people sitting in the aisles, standing ,smoking, singing( or chanting) , music blaring , hot sweaty and uncomfortable .. just what I wanted ! Now this is the real experience , why sit on reclining seats in a aircon bus ? not for me that for sure , this was amazing . just one other white face to be seen .. a girl I only spoke to once but amazingly bumped into her a few weeks later in Sihanoukville on another epic bus jouirney , we had a great laugh about it all we were as mad as each other , fogot her name but used to call her Miss New Zealand and she called me Mr. Isle of Wight .. for obvious reasons funny how you remeber little things like that .



The bus stopped twice , once at the border and once for a meal break .. hmm food !!! and it was really food local style. just me and Miss New Zealand representing the western world . I have no idea what I ate , it was cold though .. its doesnt feel right to eat cold meat and rice but it was ok . By this time I was a dab hand at eating with chop sticks which was lucky as no knife and forks to be seen here ! I also had a take away of a bag of fresh cut pineapple and mango dipped in chili poweder , god this was amazing !



I actually tell a lie , we dd stop again because the engine was running hot and the exhaust fumes somehow entered the bus so to save us all from dying the driver stopped for about an hour or so to fix the engine .

About 6 hours later we got a ferry across some river ( bad geography ) had to fight off the beggers on that thing and I wouild love to see the safty certificate for that ferry ! And there I was in PP . The bus depot was just a dusty potholed yard with a few shacks and a million tuc tuc taxis waiting for their prey !

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