I thought it would be fitting to write a blog post of the second worst bus trip of my life while riding from Cambodia back to Vietnam on one or the nicest buses we have taken. We are sitting here while a soundtrack of Cambodian karaoke songs play over the TV monitor, as the driver makes lots of unnecessary beeps to fellow drivers on the road... But in comparison to our bus journey from a Don Det, Laos to Siem Riep, this bus is heaven! Yes, there is even a wifi connection on this bus.. And the attendant actually informs you where we are heading and when we will be stopping! And there is an onboard toilet! Living the high life on this bus, for sure. Mekong Express bus, you are a sight for sore eyes.
We booked a ticket on the island, which I thought at $35 per person was a ripoff. Especially since the bus I am currently on was 9$ cheaper per person and 1000x better. The travel agent on the island assured us we would be on the VIP bus, that there is a toilet, and that it makes stops (déjà vu?). Based upon the advertised picture of the bus, it was no fancy sleeper bus, but it would do, and according to the schedule, we would leave at 8:30 am and arrive at 10:30 pm. I knew that would be based upon a lot of factors, like the bus breaking down or other hiccups we have experienced, so I took the timetable with a grain of salt. If we made it around midnight, it would be fine.
We woke up bright and early at 6:30 to a sprinkling of rain, and then made our way down to the "beach" to get a ferry to the mainland. Again they packed us into the little wooden longboats and zipped across the Mekong. Once we made it to the other side, we didn't get onto land as the other boat in front of us did, but we had to climb through 3 boats to get ashore....with a big backpack, a small backpack, and whatever else we had in our hands. Paul soaked one of his shoes as he was getting into one of the boats, as it had 3 inches of water in the bottom. I thought I was going to pull some cartoon like stunt where I had one foot in one boat and the other foot in another and the two boats would pull apart and I'd go straight in the water. Luckily we both made it ashore in one piece and stayed dry for the most part.. What a crazy way to begin the day..
We got to the bus stop and the man "in charge" took our passports, 2 photos, and $35 for the Cambodian visa. I had read that the Cambodian visa was only $30, and they tell you there is a "stamping fee" on either side of the border, but it's a scam. So essentially this guys was making $5 per person on a fee that doesn't actually exist. When another passenger questioned him, the man got upset and said "Fine, you deal with the visa yourself, I won't help you if you need help. You will slow us down if you try to do it yourself and the bus won't wait for you" (apparently bribing is a big business at the border). In the end, everyone sucked up the fact they were getting ripped off $5 as a "convenience fee" and just dealt with it. From the beginning, and the attitude this guy had, I could tell we were in for a rough day. Our only alternative to get to Siem Reap was to fly, and the only airline we could have flown was Lao Airlines, and tickets were $185 per person! Flying was out of the question, so here we were, about to make a 14 hour bus trip.
We waited for an hour or so at the bus stop.. Luckily there was a little lady making sandwiches because otherwise we would have starved! We waited for the passport guy to get all the passports ready, and for our first mode of transport to scoop us up. We were going to get a minibus to the border, and then apparently a "nice AC big bus" would be waiting for us after we had our visa stamped. This crummy little minibus pulled up, a man yelled "Siem Reap", and our bags were thrown on top and we were crammed in... No air conditioning, and the hot, bumpy road made for a miserable ride to the border.. Luckily it was only 20km away, so we didn't have to endure it for long.
What our minibus resembled... I was too out of it to take pictures this time... I knew we had gotten ourselves into a grueling day and wasn't in the mood for photos.
We arrived to the border around 10:30, and there was a string of restaurants and vendors trying to sell us stuff. I'll be honest, at this point I am so over people trying to sell me stuff. I've had bread in my face, mangoes in my face, people trying to sell me sunglasses when I am wearing some, shoe-shiners trying to shine my sandals or Paul's trainers, and people trying to get us to come in their restaurant/store by saying "lady lady come here". It's tiring, and I am tired of saying "no thanks".. I knew this was a scheme to get us to spend money when we had to wait for over an hour and a half for our "nice" bus to come. I had to pay $1 to use a wooden shack squatty toilet with no toilet paper or anywhere to wash my hands. I tried so hard not to spend money here but they managed to get a couple dollars out of us..
We knew we were with a crummy company when this one guy came over and said, "Excuse me ladies and gentlemen. I know you have already booked your ticket to Siem Reap, but I will offer you a VIP ac van that will take you on the new private state road to Siem Reap and it only takes 4 hours instead of 14 and it costs $10". This angered a lot of us, since we had already paid $35 for our through ticket. We could have just paid for a minibus to the border and then gotten this "quick route" once we arrived for $10! But no, we were suckered by the tour company. One Italian woman began screaming at this man and demanded her money back. She even went to the police at the border (I wouldn't suggest getting in a argument with anyone at a border in Asia... Saving face is a big thing here). The group of us that traveled together decided that no,we will not pay another $10 and will just suck it up on the big bus.. I immediately regretted that decision when the bus that was actually taking us to Phrnom Penh, 7 hours away, rolled up to collect us.
It was an old bus, probably from the 90s, and it was so dusty and dirty inside. Someone had written on the headrest "this bus [explicative] sucks". The ac was nonexistent, and there was black gunk all around the vents.. I knew I would develop "Bus Cough" again after this ride. I really need one of those fask masks they all wear here.
Many of the the seats were broken, and my knees jammed into the seat I front of me. One poor guy had to sit on a plastic stool in the middle of the aisle. It was hot, dusty, and gross. This was not what we were told we would be traveling on, nor is it what I paid for... And there was no bathroom. Excellent! Yeah, right, VIP for sure. I know "VIP" is a loosely used term here in Southeast Asia, but this was a joke.
Finally around 12:30, after forking over $2 for a can of "Mister Potato" chips and $1 for a mango to the hawkers at the border, we were off! Sweating and gasping for fresh air, we plodded along the great Cambodian highway system. See the picture below for what turned out to be more of an "off-roading" experience.
There were patches of pot-holed asphalt every now and then, but for most of this trip I bounced around on the hot, sticky seat. Forget reading my book, which I had planned on finishing during this trip.. The words were basically jumping off the page! I would not want to see what the roads here are like during the rainy season.. Mud and potholes galore! I think my brothers would enjoy driving here in the rainy season their big trucks.
At 5:30 we stopped at a restaurant and were able to use their traditional SE Asian bathrooms, but luckily we didn't have to pay. None of the bus staff told us how long we were stopping for or anything, but when I saw them eating a meal I figured we should ask and possibly eat some food too, since you never know when you are going to eat when traveling on buses..they said we were stopping for 20 minutes. A nice kid that worked at the restaurant told us we should probably eat some food now, because Phnom Penh is at least 4 hours away.. So we scarfed down some vegetable stew and rice, which wasn't too bad. We were starving since we hadn't eaten lunch, and didn't know when/if we were eating again.
We all hopped back on the hot bus and continued on the "road". The Cambodian countryside seemed pretty desolate.. Dry, brown rice paddies and farmland dotted with cows, wooden shacks on the roadside and the occasional huge house here and there (the disparity between the rich and poor is quite obvious).. There were small fires burning in the farmland, and trees sparsely filling the wide, flat landscape. You could definitely tell we were in a poor nation, as there was trash strewn about everywhere and the types of homes people lived in.. It is so eye opening seeing how people survive and live with solely the basics. As the sun went down, you could see a single light bulb illuminating the wooden shacks and homes of the locals. One light!! I think about all the lights we have in one room at my mom's house and it's probably the equivalent to what 5 families have in each of their homes.
Time ticked on consistently with the bumps and potholes, and at 9:45 we pulled into another restaurant where the man on the bus yelled "Siem Reap"! We and our fellow travelers unloaded the bus, grabbed our bags, and went to the roadside restaurant where we told to wait for the bus to take us to our final destination. We were told the bus would be here in 20 minutes, so knowing that means probably longer and that we were at least 4 hours from our hotel, I called to notify them that we were on the side of the road somewhere in Cambodia and at least 4 hours away..I then called my mom because I was having Asia burnout and needed to hear her voice. By this time, I hadn't had any water because of lack of bathroom facilities, and I was so thirsty. The nice man at the restaurant charged me $1 for 2 small bottles of water, which I chugged like I hadn't had water in days. We used the traditional SE Asian toilet facilities which had no lights or running water (that made it interesting!) and waited for our next mode of transport to arrive.
At around 10, a big bus with "VIP Luxurious Bus" written on the side pulled up, and we both gave a hesitant sigh of relief. The bus we had actually paid for may have actually arrived! We waited for 10 minutes while the bus staff rearranged the cargo or whatever was on the bottom floor of the bus, and being the quick thinker I am, I left Paul again with the bags and hopped on to grab us a seat, as there were no assigned seats. Good thing I did, since there were already people on the bus and not many seats available. Again more people than seats, which meant those who didn't have a travel partner were out of luck.. The bus staff guy pointed, shouted, moved people around.. He even made one family move their sleeping child and put them in their lap so someone could sit down. I felt bad for those in the back row, which should accomodate 5.. They squeezed in 6 people and sat like sardines for the whole trip. One poor guy sat on the floor in the back because he didn't want a lady with a baby to have to move.
This bus did have AC, yay! But it reeked of gasoline fumes that burned your nose and throat..I sat with a scarf wrapped around my face, and the ac was so cold Paul sat with his arms in his sleeves. The bus was also dusty, thanks to all the dirt from outside. Everytime we hit a big bump, dust fell down on Paul's head. One time 2 big spiders fell from the ceiling onto him and then scurried off. The bus may have been big and had AC, but it still was awful. The guy in front of me put his seat back all the way and a handle slammed into my knees every time we hit a big bump. Ugh.
The worst part was coming in and out of sleep and seeing that the night was continuing on and yet there were no lights or towns anywhere to be seen.. We were in the middle of nowhere.. Where was Siem Reap? I would doze off and wake up, seeing 1,2,3 something AM on the clock at the front of the bus and wonder when we were actually arriving.
We finally rolled into a sketchy alleyway "bus station" at 3:45ish and saw tons of tuk-tuk drivers waiting for us.. Great, I thought, this is going to be fun. Like a pack of wolves, they set upon us as we stumbled the bus in a half-sleep stupor. In good tuktuk driver form, they tried to tell us that our hotel was not in the center and way outside of town (it wasn't) and even got aggressive at some points. We were definitely not in the mood to deal with them, or their scams ($5 per person to the hotel?! Yeah, right). We finally got a half decent guy to take us to our hotel and ended up paying $6..it should have been 3 but we didn't want to argue anymore.. We FINALLY arrived to our hotel at 4 am, and the driver had the cheek to try and arrange to be our "driver" while we were in Siem Reap and wanted to set up a time to pick us up later that day and take us to Angkor Wat. He didn't seem to understand that we had been traveling for 21 hours and had no interest to do anything but lay in the hotel room all day.
When Paul tried to explain that we would take his information and let him know, he got upset and said "I know what tourists are like, you're all the same! You won't call me!". Well tourists aren't all the same, but so far tuk tuk and taxi drivers that hunt for prey at bus stations are all the same... They are jerks!
Finally in bed, at 4 something, we were glad that we only had one more longmbus ride to endure. It was a bummer, though, because we basically wasted a day in Siem Reap because we were so exhausted and had no drive to do anything but seek out food and watch TV. I took 3 naps that day. Siem Reap is a pretty cool town, and that's what my next post will be all about. I wish we had more time to spend there!
No comments:
Post a Comment