Well Frida was heading back to Bangkok and I wanted to go and check out the wild north east of Cambodia, apparently it is great but I will never know. At least not for a while anyway. After starting off to head to a mountain town called Prasat Preah Vihear I was told the roads are all stuffed because it is to wet to get there. Then I wanted to go to an area called Ratanakiri, but I needed to get to a place about 5 hours away to leave from there called Kompong Cham. The first step was getting out of Siem Reap, which I am a big fan of by the way, everyone rubbishes it but I had a lot of fun there. I caught a moto from Siem Reap to Dam Dek, about 50km for $3 which was great. When I got there I managed to get a bus ticket 2 hours later to Kompong Cham. While I was waiting I checked out a really cool market where they don’t really get westerners. I was talking to a guy who owned a bike shop and the basic bikes over there are $25, picked up some tasty food and then some fruit to eat while I was waiting. I managed to find a spare hammock to wait in which was great. The bus came about 1 and took about 5.5 hours, always longer than you think. So basically I was on the road since a little after 8am, arrived pretty close to 6pm and was maybe 350km from where I started. I started asking people about Ratanakiri and apparently there were floods there, and the already shit roads were now impassable. This was starting to get frustrating as I was in a dead end town and no where near where I wanted to be. I ended up getting some great street food that night which was really good, one was like a shrimp biscuit fried up, and the other ribs and rice mmmm. I decided that I was done with Cambodia, and was going to head back to Vietnam. Ahh the pain starts.
I booked a ticket on the 7am bus to Phnom Penh($2.50) which was meant to arrive at 9:30am. We crashed twice which was fun, and everyone gets out has a look and stands around. After getting to
Phnom Penh at 11:30 there was a bus leaving to Ho Chi Min City at 11:30($9), so I jumped on that, and was on my way. I arrived at about 7:15pm and enquired about buses to Nha Trang($5), there was one leaving at 8pm and arriving at 6am, apparently it was a really comfortable sleeper bus. Well that was where the pain really started to kick in. I could not get to sleep to save my life, I was stuck in the back seat which was hot and could not recline J. I arrived at 7:30am without a wink of sleep and was already booked on a boat tour around the islands thanks to pre planning. So the moral of the story is, buses are always late, sleepers are never really sleepers, and don’t spend 23/24 hours on a bus, it is not fun.
August 10th 2007
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Travel
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Border crossing Cambodia Kompong Cham Vietnam
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