After promises of a seat each, air con & no stops we got on the bus to find the isles and foot wells crammed with bags of rice! Grabbed a seat at the back and hoped for a not so full bus! We then set off stopping every 10 mins to pick up more people. Our bus had about 20 seats plus 4 pop up seats in the isle.....At every stop we thought you can't fit more on, but they did......40 people, 2 live chickens tied together and a baby in arms later accompanied by their weekly shopping & luggage! Lots of stops & over 5 hours later we arrived in Sen monorom! We were dropped off in the middle of a busy, dusty street but we managed to get some directions to the guesthouse we had booked with the elephant valley project and found it. We were shown to our room for the next 3 nights: small, a bit dark with green walls and Ben 10 blankets, oh and a small bathroom with the shower literally over the toilet! But hey, it's clean ish and we're only sleeping there!!
Found heffalump cafe & felt we had to test their lemon passionfruit cheese cake & the chocolate cake with some locally grown coffee.....amazing, made the bus ride seem worth while. Have 2 days to recover before the next bus ride on Thursday to Phnom Penh. Not looking forward to the 5 hour (hopefully) bus ride or the museum's of the country's history we're going to in Phnom Penh but we can't not.
Anyway, our 2 days at the Elephant Valley Project starts tomorrow..... 😊
