I was on the $5USD express service to Phnom Penh booked from my Hotel and fortunately the bus station was directly across the road. Fortunate because I may have been running late due to the late arrival of breakfast and the fact that the waiter kept forgetting things, such as hot water for tea, fruit, the jams for the table, butter and milk. I was considering a sarcastic suggestion that I should return in an hour after he got the table set but knew that would have been lost on him.
The bus took off on time and wended it's way through Battambang to a secondary bus station where more people were picked up. We then proceeded to enter the countryside with more stops along the way. I guess that my concept of express really means non stop or maybe limited stops. For a period of time we seemed to play a game with 2 huge trucks laden with sacks of rice. We would tailgate them, struggle to overtake, then stop for a pickup and let them get in front again. I got to know those trucks quite well.
I have travelled on similar busses in many places and these were a pleasant surprise, no loud blaring music, which seems to be characteristic of many other bus rides. In fact the we were entertained at first by a series of video clips of, I assume Cambodian, performers. The clips all told a story, which were variations of boy meets girly, boy splits up with girl and one that followed the fall of grace of one girly into poverty and prostitution when in her darkest hour a prince charming type rescued her and they lived happily ever after. All of this was accompanied with both male and females giving overly dramatic love lorn looks at each other. Later we had some slap stick comedy shows that had the children and adults in fits of laughter followed by a movie that seemed to be about a fat kid who was incredibly strong having a series of slapstick adventures.
I read a book instead.
We travelled through basically an agricultural countryside. Lots of rice paddies, some other fields of green stuff. It was pretty countryside and even had hills as we approached Phnom Penh. It was also much drier around PP.
What I understood to be a 5 hour trip actually took over 7.5 hours. My procedure on such trips is to minimise food and water consumption, to minimise the need to use toilet facilities. There is nothing worse than getting caught short with no idea when the next stop may happen and what the facilities will be like when you do stop. I have a veryy painful memory of a bus ride from hell in Belgium once when my companion and I had a belly full of beer.After thirty minutes we were in need of a toilet, when we did stop over 2 hours later I was in dire straights and could only hobble to the toilet, which was a good 200 metres from the bus.
In fact on this trip we had 2 stops on the way. The first had pretty clean squat style toilets. I am quite comfortable using these. At the second I went native and joined the locals polluting the nearby stream that is probably used for drinking and washing and cooking and whatever. At this second stop the bus was also washed.
Arrival into Phnom Penh was straight forward, I collected my bags and negotiated a price with a tuk tuk driver to take me to my hotel. He assured me that he knew where it was so consequently we spent an extra 20 minutes trying to find it.
I am staying at the very ritzy La Pavilion, very nice.
The Bludger is cooling off with a swim and a Martini being stirred behind me.
Nick Smith
Nick@nicksmith.info
Sent from my Acer Iconia A500 Tab
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