29 hours. 3 buses. 1 border crossing. 2 missed meals. 11 lady finger bananas eaten. 600 baht saved. 1 sore, sleepless and shitty traveler. Again the open road beguiled me, and rewarded my love of its exciting unpredictability with another ass pounding trip that I am running out of ways to describe. As one who advocates eternal optimism, I haven't been very good at practicing what I preach. I knew that 10 times out of 10, I was going to get shonked by a travel agent, so why worry? I was not motivated enough as an independent traveler to want to do everything myself, so I have to accept the short comings of that laziness. Instead of hoping for a bargain and being lucky to get anything at all for my money, I decided to put each journey into the hands of fate and tried to relax into the situation. Even if that involved cramped spaces, homicidal drivers, and no ice-cream.
I am always sad to leave Bangkok but on the last night, the guest house owner ensured I could not get away from there fast enough. Having just spent the evening sharing a few beers with the amicable Michael, who I met in Don Det, I was made an offer too frightening to believe. In my more malicious moments, I have been known to refer to certain people as possessing a head like a half chewed mintie. This old dears' uncanny similarity to said tasty sweet made her offer of coming back to my room even more terrifying. 400 baht to make me 'happy, happy' had nothing to do with pizza I suspect. I declined and retired to my room with a bag of bargains that I had no intention of buying when I first set out for the evening.
I checked out of my guest house, a place dirtier than most toilets in Asia, saying nothing of the nauseating state of its own toilets. I must have had my 'desperate to listen to bullshit' face on, as numerous people unloaded on me before I had even boarded the first bus. And thanks to beer compromised planning, I had to eat various forms of sugar disguised as food for breakfast; always good for the insulin levels.
The first bus had 2 qualities that put it above most I have ridden so far. A/ It was half empty, allowing my well behaved day pack to quietly occupy the seat next to me. And B/ Contrary to earlier claims of unskilled bus painting, this one was covered in the ever wonderful Winnie the Pooh. The only downside was that he was on the outside and I was on the inside. It was missing an on-board toilet, an irregularity coming too late to save Steph from learning through trial and error exactly what a used urinal cake feels like in your hand.
It's biggest downside was the war movie it was playing so loud that I was convinced the bus was actually being shelled by heavy artillery, and not the variety seen on Khao San Road. I see war as a horrific demonstration of a largely male prerogative to increase their chances of getting laid by slaughtering rival suitors under the guise of religious fanaticism. Most war mongers would be less trigger happy if they got laid more often. I left the movie for my own private universe where a nubile British soldier terrorised me with her weapons of mass satisfaction.
The hassle free but time consuming border crossing gave me time to do my good deed for the day. I tracked down a bowl of water for a hot and tied up labrador who showed his gratitude by slobbering all over my shirt and licking my nose. His girth meant his was otherwise well cared for and he probably didn't need the half of my lunch that I shared with him.
On the Cambodian side, Torture Transport Inc. packed in the punters until 2 people remained, me and a Brit, with everyone undecided about the mathematics of one seat being left. A fat Swede in an 'Absolute redneck' shirt and his even fatter and sweatier mate had a seat between them that was almost obliterated under their rolls. 8 locals put their heads together, and in Tetris like fashion, rearranged the bags to make the back corner seat available to me. The catapulting propensity of the position was not as disturbing as the compacting my backpack underwent to fit in the boot. It was fortunate that I had left some valuables back in Bangkok, including the last bottle of whiskey, (Did I mention that it cost $1?) as it would have gotten pulverised.
Calling what laid between the border and Siem Reip a road would be like calling cucumber tasty, ie. it's just not. The Mars Explorer would have been more suited than the donkey drawn carts that are its main patrons. It was a river of dust that the heat forced us to allow into our bus due to the absence of air conditioning. With a top speed of 40 kms thanks to the widely varying topography of the track, and a flat tyre, we arrived in Siem Reip 4 hours later than expected. 16 hours in total; 1 hour short of the same trip last year that involved elongated bridge repairs and my bum cheeks now held the calcium dust of my powderised pelvis.
One night in Siem Reip, a city whose over abundance of tacky hotels took as long being constructed as what it took the builders of the nearby temples to have lunch. This contrasting quality of Siem Reip to the Angkor remains was so large that the latter nearly wore out my camera less than a year ago. And not a single photo was taken of the former. So 4 hours later it was back into a bus. Needing to procure food (see refined shit) for the last leg of the trip, I passed up on the imported Pringles (Owned by the worlds biggest animal testing company, Procter and Gamble. Fuck them! Poachers and Procter = purgatory!) for an Asian brand of chips. I think the price I paid brought me the entire company.
In true Wellington fashion, I had drawn the short straw and sat back left corner on the bus again. Internal air was being conditioned to about 2 degrees lower than the sweltering heat outside. Sitting on top of the engine cooked my feet to odiferous levels, as it did to the locals sitting with me. The old dear next to me had no teeth and wrinkled skin that would have been a better fit on someone twice her size.
At one stop, Asia again demonstrated its disturbing proclivity to fry up anything that moves on its own accord. Aside from the usual birds and fish of varying sizes, spiders big and menacing enough to have a laxative effect, were also piled high on a few hawkers plates. That property of arachnids, that were as big as dinner plates in fishermans terms, was wasted on me. There was a need to pass all that dirt I had inhaled and ingested the previous day but the toilet at this stop had no water for flushing or washing. 7 relatively comfortable hours to Phnom Penh and another day ended feeling more compacted than my backpack.
