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Published: March 13th 2006
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We had heard the horror stories of the bus to Cambodia. Armed raids to rob you of your belongings, a 17 hour trek across the worst tracks ever, corrupt officials at the border, bus scams leaving you stranded at horrible guesthouses until you paid more money....Well at least some of the above are not true or at least did not happen to us! We started thinking perhaps this was a necessary 'right of passage', then we thought "Are we CRAZY?"
The journey started off pretty badly to begin with. Leaving Ko Phi Phi was hard enough as it was. You must all read this thinking "poor buggers, look how hard their lives are"....BUT the truth is that it is the longest we have stayed in one place and we have no other home so as soon as you start to unpack your bag somewhere you get quite settled and it is then unsettling to move on. Although we are not going to pretend we would rather be at home in February. We gave everybody a fleeting thought on Monday morning at 9am GMT as we floated through the Andaman on lilo's. Anyway, we digress....
We were on a pretty
tight time scale. Arriving into Bangkok at 5.30am and then leaving for Cambodia at 7.30am. All in all it was to be a 28 hour journey straight. Well, that was before the bus broke down in Krabi 2 hours into our journey. mmm
Being Thailand we sat for 3 hours pondering what to do before it was decided that we would get another truck 200km to meet the bus for Bangkok. People piled everywhere as there were not enough seats to get on (even counting the garden furniture taken from the restaurant nearby and strategically placed in the aisles) we started up the road. We boarded the bus inevitably late but were assured we would make the connection - the driver managed still to stop for his customary dinner with the family on the side of the road. We woke up at 6.30am still miles from Bangkok and the traffic was piling up infront of us. Not good. We had no Thai money and it looked like no ticket to Cambodia.
After a nailbiting, clock watching, snapping at each other hour we pulled in at 7.28am and Andrew legged it to stop our next bus. This he managed
with the help of Lewi, a guy from our guest house in Phi Phi. Cheers for the help mate. It just goes to show that the world is a pretty small place. So, with our trousers around our ankles (or lara's to be exact...another embarassing tale....I told her not to buy those enormous fisherman things) we were running along the streets of Bangkok to the bus with assorted help from other passers by. We left for Cambodia with ALMOST all of our bags...oops....we left (or had stolen - it could have been as neither of us remember seeing it under the seat) Andrew's camera bag with camera and film.....oh well thats what insurance is for.
Too late, we were Cambodia bound thank god.....or is it. The border crossing was frantic in the least and reminded us straight away of India. It was noisy, dirty, smelly and very overpopulated with beggars trying to part you with your dollar, corrupt people trying to sell you Visa's for extortionate amounts and just basic confusion. However, we successfully found our way with minimul hitting of children and beggars required and boarded the "bus" to Siem Reap from the Border. Yes the stories were true. It is not really a bus and the roads were not really roads. It took 8 hours to travel 105km. It is a red dirt track(probably the worst in the world) which left us coverered in dust and ruined whatrever we were wearing. The potholes were so big you could lose your bus in them and the journey probably has given us some kind of brain damage with the amount of times our heads smashed against the ceiling / windows / each other and random other passengers. I swear I can hear Lara's brain cell moving round a lot more noisily now. Andrew was OK, he developed a technique called "happy placing"(gay or what!). Lara was not. For a start she now has started a campaign for all tourists to be given sports bras on the border for obvious reasons and secondly, the overnight bus journey has given her another chest infection. Not good news when medical care in Cambodia is dire....another similarity to India....or maybe the NHS. We can only presume that the orginal infection never cleared and has reappeared.
Cambodia is a little bit like Norfolk.... extremely flat, which is not what we expected. Just from the journey to Siem Reap we realised how extremely poor the country is and how little tourism they have compared to neighbouring Thailand or Vietnam. There was a lot of begging, mud huts line the track and we were beginning to think we were in India again. There are no road rules - any side goes and the horns go constantly...yes and there are even cows on them, although not sacred here so I reckon we can eat these ones. The people however, are amazing. So incredibly friendly and with such a dark history they really are an inspiration to us all. The rural areas are like a step back 400 years ago with ox drawn wooden carts ploughing the fields. Very little transport on the "roads" and the dirt and smell of India...or more aptly the dirt and smell that comes with poor countries. We continue to Siem Reap.
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Michael
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Fisherman Trousers
Lara, I thought you decided against fisherman trousers!!!!!