Journey to Cambodia

I waited from half past seven until a quarter to eight for the pre-paid transport to pick me up (at half past seven) and take me to the port - to catch the eight thirty ferry. Eventually a man on a motorbike arrived and handed me a mobile phone. On the other end of the phone someone was trying to explain to me why his vehicle had failed to start, and telling me to get into the taxi outside the agency. The taxi went in the opposite direction from where we needed to go, then stopped in a wood, with absolutely no explanation. Minutes passed, my anxiety levels were rising, then a couple ambled out of a house and got into the taxi. When we finally got onto the road to the ferry, the driver put his foot down, but five minutes before we reached the port he stopped and started a long conversation with a woman in the street. All three of us remonstrated loudly with him, but he ignored us completely. When we reached the port, we discovered that we now had to walk (dragging our luggage) along a long causway to the boat. We tried to run, with difficulty and just reached the boat seconds before it left.

The sea was choppy. I had to get out on deck. Deck, unfortunately, was a small area behnd the engine, hot and noisy, already crammed with Vietnamese people, their hens and cocks and sacks of merchandise. After a while I managed to squeeze in and sit on the back rail, in the corner, where the sea sprayed over me the whole way. I arrived encrusted with salt.

We were not impressed with the bus that they had laid on for us. The suspension was knackered and the thing bounced so high that the driver had to keep slowing down. We had all paid over the odds for a nice new bus, but we didn't get it. Yet another border crossing rip off. On the other side of the border they transferred us to another bus going to Phnom Penh, only marginally better than the first one. The air conditioning worked on one side of the bus but not on the other and I was put in the back seat, where I couldn't see out because I was above the level of the windows.

Half way to Phnom Penh a four by four crashed into the bus, buckling the side of the bus over the wheel. After messing around with the police for an hour or so, the driver and his crew found a sledgehammer and bashed away at the bent metal for an hour until they had bent it back enough to allow the wheel to turn. In the process a piece of the side of the bus fell off. Then we all got back in and the bus limped to the nearest town, turned off the road into a place full of broken and bent vehicles and stopped. Everyone cheered. Half an hour later we were all on yet another bus, on our way to Phnom Penh. We arrived at eight in the evening, hot, hungry, thirsty and tired.