Happy Pizza!

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Up up and away early the next day, i really should have done some more
research into what we were doing but I vaguely remembered from 3 years ago
on the same road. There is a knack to getting to Angkor Wat without getting
sucked into the nightmare of your average tourist. Its very easy to get
scared and herded in with the rest, only to be subjected to imaginary
delays, breakdowns at convienient restaurants, stops for no reason at all,
all in order to get commision and herd you into the best paying guesthouses
at 3 in the morning. Never again. We got to the northern bus station in
Bangkok in time for the 8.30 am bus AND breakfast, bonus! The trip went
without a hitch, we jumped in a tuk tuk and headed for the border. While
being ably (and uselessly) helped by our local tout (did he really think I
couldn't figure out which building did what despite the huge signs saying
what they were....?). We got through customs and immigration ok and then my
memory of the required proceedure became a bit fuzzy. We got on a
motortuktuk and tried to get him to take us up the road to where you get
share trucks. We only found one, he tried to take us off the main road but
I called him up on that and we went back. We carried on, the guy was ok, bit
crazy, we had some nice races with tourist buses, they must of thought were
were going the whole way on that death trap!

Eventually the town dissappeared and we stopped on the dirt track in the
jungle and looked at each other. I half thought that this would be went he
would get his gun out, as he stopped speaking english and just spoke
khmyer. I wasn't too concerned, i jumped out, flagged down the next minibus and
asked the driver if he was taking passengers. turned out he was a angkor
wat guide coming back from thailand and we jumped in the back to the
astonishment of his family.

Nothing wrong with the road, we averaged about 60 km/h and apart from one
stop when we thought the bridge might be down it went without a hitch. My
first time we averaged 10km/h, the second maybe 70 as the road was
completely flat. Loads of room, no pointless stops and his 2 year old
children were more fun to watch than the usual karaoke TV rubbish. Turned
up in siam reap at 7pm, which was 12 hours after we woke up. nice! crazy
germans!

Couldn't believe the ammount of huge new hotels now! must have been 20 on
the road from the airport, 100+ rooms each, all luxurious. Slightly
different from the $2 room I checked into :p one shower and the obligatory
bumping of the backpack contents onto the bed and were were ready for food
and beer. It all gets a bit hazy after that, first place we saw was 'the
happy herb pizza co' and we figured we may as well have a pizza. I
introduced Bandy to the lovely local Angkor Beer (2 thumbs up) and we
shared a medium pizza, also 'medium happy' whatever that means. Interesting night,
and I've not been quite as happy as that for a good while! Must be the
tomato sauce!

We somehow made it back to the guest house after bizzare encounters with 4
magic trick playing english guys, the indian barman that wanted to kill
them, the worst pooltable in cambodia (it should be shot), the
uncontrollable desire to write down billy joel lyrics (but improved), the
saddest and simultaneously happiest and nicest person with no arms you
could meet and a desperate quest for water by looking for a 'shop with water'
(anyone will sell you water....). Ah, fun.

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