A Long Journey

After Siem Reap (where the temples are) a bunch of us went to Battambang (I was going and they all decided to follow me). Battambang is in the north western part of Cambodia and is famous for the 6-10 million bats that fly out of the caves continuously for 40 minutes at sunset. It sounds underwhelming but it’s far worth it and one of the coolest things I’ve seen. The town was a disappointment though, it supposedly has an art scene, but I couldn’t find it.

*A short interjection: I met an awesome bunch of people at the hostel I stayed at in Siem Reap, people that would make the rest of the trip: Huw (pronounced Hew), Klara, Mel, Lisa, Lorne, Toby, Jamie, Becca and Viktor. Aside from seeing new places and experiencing new cultures, one of the best parts about traveling is meeting new people and making travel friendships; whether they last a day, a week or longer they are as much as part of the place as the monuments you see.

Since Cambodia has no rail system the only way to travel is by bus. From Battambang to get to the islands you need to get either a night or day bus to Phenom Penh, transfer and get a bus to the Chinese casino town of Sihanoukville and then a ferry. Toby, Becca, Jamie and I happen to be following a similar route and heading to the islands. We opted for the 22:30 sleeper bus. When choosing a sleeper bus you have two options: option 1 and the one we chose a bus where the seats are “like” beds, individual bed seats angled at 45 degrees that your legs (if you are short enough) straighten out, option 2, a bus where they have a small full sized mattress flat that you share with another person. If you’re alone, you might get stuck like my friend Sanchez with a heavyset tuk tuk driver. Option 1 was supposed to be a newer bus and more reliable.

I got picked up from my hostel at exactly ten o’clock, they say anywhere between 22:00-22:30, so we took it as a good sign. We arrived to the bus departure point at 22:15 with a sleeper bus there waiting, so far it was going great! Except it wasn’t our bus. Ours didn’t come until later and the scheduled 22:30 departure changed to 23:30. No problem, the later the better, I wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep that early anyway. We got on the bus, got settled, I took two sleeping pills and drifted in and out of consciousness thinking about how fast it feels like he’s going, how bumpy it is, how to position my legs comfortably(the 45 degree angle creates an area so your legs fit into the space behind the back of the person in front of you.)

I obviously fell asleep for a bit because some time later I woke up hotter than an egg in a frying pan. It was the hottest I’ve ever been in my life, dripped in sweat I realized the air condition wasn’t on and we weren’t moving. We were pulled over on the side of the road. It was so hot I started panicking, I felt like I was suffocating. I didn’t know what to do. I was in a weird daze from the sleeping pills and people were lying on the floor below me in the aisle (I was in the top “bunk” bed seat). I couldn’t stand it, I carefully avoided the people and got off the bus. The bus driver, the attendant and some others were at the back with the engine door open. To make matters worse it was 1:30am, we had only been driving for about 2 hours. A couple seconds later Toby, Becca and Jamie joined me, we stood there off balanced and dazed contemplating our situation and dreading what was going to come. A little over an hour later another bus came to pick us up, except it wasn’t a sleeper bus, it was just a normal bus. At 7am we arrived to Phenom Penh to a scene you don’t want to arrive to after a trip like that, chaos and disorganization with tuk tuk drivers ready to grab the first body that came off the bus. Jamie and I went to go exchange our tickets for the next bus. The day before Lucy and Mel did the same trip and had to wait 3 hours at that bus station, I was hoping that didn’t happen to us. While we were waiting someone directed Toby and Becca to the Sihanoukville bus,  it sounded sketchy when Toby came up and said “some guy just asked if we were going to Sihanoukville.” We got the tickets and got on the bus. It took five and a half hours on a bus with very little AC and a journey that felt like eternity.

We finally got to Sihanoukville at one-ish. Originally I planned on staying a night there but once I arrived I decided to continue to the islands and not waste a night. As we got off we were again bombarded by tuk tuk drivers and as the bus dropped us off in the middle of no where we had no option other than to take one. We knew there was a 14:00 ferry and wanted to catch it, the tuk tuk driver took us to a ferry agency, again we had no choice, only to be told that the 14:00 was sold out. We had to catch the 17:00, so we got lunch and waited by the dockside. Jamie and Becca had checked our ticket in and asked where the ferry was leaving from, we were told right where we were waiting. At 16:40 we decided to go to it, but were told it wasn’t leaving from that dock it was leaving from another. They had a big tuk tuk to take us there. When we got to the other dock, it was in a sketchy broken shipyard with what looked like 100 people standing on the pier for one boat. Imagine Dunkirk without the bombs and you can imagine the scene before us. Our first thought was, “we’re never getting to the islands,” but there were two boats! one for Koh Rong, the bigger island where Toby, Becca and Jamie were going and another one we couldn’t see for  the smaller, Koh Rong Sanleom and the one where I was going. We said our goodbyes knowing we’d see each other again in Kampot. The ferry didn’t leave until 17:40 and I arrived to the hostel on the island a little before 19:00 putting an end to an exhausting leg of my trip.