World Cambodia CB01 Ampil Pram Dem

Dan's Trip Journal

Poipet to Siem Reap by 'mini-bus' Nov 14, 2005

I can't even begin to convey in words the sheer misery we experienced on this leg of the journey. I shouldn't even try but I feel it might be healthy to purge my mind of this 30 hours of hell. In the interest of time and money we decided to make a marathon jaunt from Chiang Mai all the way to Siem Reap without any hotel stopovers. In retrospect, the 12 hour bus ride from Chiang Mai to Bangkok was a breeze even though the bus was overcrowded, overheated, and overpriced. Nevertheless, we made it. Next step; get across town in morning rush hour traffic to the bus station so we could catch another bus from Bangkok to the Cambodian border. This was accomplished with relative ease even though it involved one misguided tuk-tuk driver and another hour-long local bus ride. Bear in mind at this point it's 8:00 am and we've been in transit for 14 hours with no real sleep. We purchase tickets for the 8:30 bus to the border and even have time to brush our teeth, buy water and snacks. Life isn't so bad after all. After another five hours on a bus (luckily with decent a/c) we're finally at the border and make our way through immigration and customs in midday sun alongside annoying touts trying to sell us package tours. There is no public bus system in Cambodia so we settle on one company that seems like a fairly reputable organization. The guy tells me it's a 5-hour journey and the bus is a/c, although I could sense a bit of flexibility on those claims. In any case we are just happy to be on the final leg of this hellacious journey. Finally, after the company has sold all the seats plus a couple extra we begin to load the mass of sweaty people and packs on some old beaten-down craft which clearly wasn't designed with 6 ft-tall 185-pound males in mind. Forget about AC. I'm thinking at least the windows open but that is a blessing in disguise as we are about to embarke on the dustiest road I've ever seen. This a main highway in Cambodia but it resembles something out of Mad Max. There must have recently been landmines cleared along the entire length of this 'road' because the potholes were immense. It wasn't 30 minutes before the bus breaks down. So we're stuck on the side of the road while these guys stand around looking confused. Finally a man shows up who is so absolutely filthy he obviously knows how to fix an engine. He crawls under the bus and in a few minutes surfaces with a smile, grabs some lube and returns to conquer the axle. Once that's done he actually joins us for the next leg of the journey just in case something else breaks down. It does. He fixes it again. We spent the next few hours swerving all over (and off of) this dirt track dodging craters. My ass will never be the same after bouncing up and down for 8 hours on a seat thats' been void of any cushion since '92. The only fun part was that it was so unpleasant there developed a certain commradery amongst fellow passengers subjecting themselves to this mild form of torture. Eventually it cools off, gets dark and we're all laughing about our asses and the system of body rotations required to endure this punishment. I'm feeling like it must not be far to Siem Reap when something ahead becomes apparent; the bridge is out. Apparently an overloaded truck tried to cross and broke through. So now our driver is attempting to navigate an alternate route through the rice paddys but isn't sure if we can make this very small wooden bridge to the east. Well eventually with some help and a few extra wooden planks he decides to make a go of it. We all get out to reduce the weight of the vehicle and walk a few hundred paces down the trail while he aligns the wheels and slowly creeps accross this rotting wood structure referred to as a bridge. The gods were on our side because he made it, we all cheered and were on our not-so-merry way...only two more hours to Siem Reap. FINALLY at about 11pm we pull in and can finally, after over 30 hours, get a shower and a bed. It was nice.

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