casam20

Part 1: Things began a little rough, as we began the trip in Mongolia. The first time Kailie arrived in Mongolia, Mongolian International Air Transport (MIAT), the famed Mongolian carrier food poisoned her. This time around, she skipped the meal but they lost her luggage. This created a bad situation because she arrived just before midnight on the 8th and we had tickets to leave at 9:10pm on the 9th. We called the following morning to find out the luggage that was promised to arrive at 10am, hadn’t arrived. I could say that this came as a surprise but nothing could be further from the truth. The three of us, being Cassandra, Kailie and I decided it was best for Cassandra and I to head out and Kailie could catch the train the next day to ... read more

This trip started with rushing through dinner and running to get a taxi to get to the pier just to find out that we were an hour early. Like many other situations during this trip, it was not our fault, we were lied to. By arriving early we would end up spending money at the local businesses that our booking agent was friends with. It really didn't take long to discover this reoccurring situation. During our hour, I sat there and even though I wanted to buy some snacks or a beer I held out. We boarded our night boat in an unsafe and unorganized fashion as usual that could've easily ended in someone falling off the narrow boarding plank into the ocean with all their belongings. The first thing I though of upon entry into ... read more

We woke early to catch our bus to Bangkok and were a little under the weather because of the previous nights festivities. Plus, we were going in with all a whole arsenal of horror stories that we had heard about this particular journey. I personally didn't think it was as bad as what I'd heard but then again, I'd been hearing it for about a month and we were in Cambodia. We got on and the bus was like 90 degrees at 8am, I asked the driver if the A/C worked and he said no. This was a little discouraging but we were in Cambodia and the windows did roll down. This did however make me wonder what the letters VIP stood for on our VIP Bus ticket. I fell asleep on the bus because I ... read more

Phnom Penh was a pretty cool city but there was really nothing to see if you stayed more than 1.5 days. So that is exactly what we did. We arrived in Phnom Penh late after a long bus ride from Saigon. We found accommodations for the night and ate dinner. Everyone we met told us to watch a movie called “The Killing Fields,” to get a better idea of what they were before we went, so we popped the movie in at the hostel and watched it before going to bed. We woke fairly early and headed to the Killing Fields the next morning. It was pretty intense to hear what happened here and why. In the mid 70’s a man by the name of Pol Pot started an organization called Khmer Rouge and they were ... read more

So this is the first time that I've ever seen or ridden on a sleeper bus. The bus actually had beds fully equipped with a pillow and blanket along with functioning air conditioning and a window that opened. I'm not an engineer but I did find three major flaws with the sleeper buses construction that I'd like to take a moment to point out. One, when I was laying on my side the screenless window was at eye level and opened about a foot and a half. I had to shut the window because I almost lost my pillow on the freeway. Two, the seats were made out of pleather and were not completely horizontal, they were angled up so that my head was always higher than my feet. When the bus driver would slam on ... read more