In spite of all logic, there is no direct route on public transportation from Koh Kong to Battambang. There is a brand new direct road, but for some unexplained reason all of the bus company operators are terrified of it. To go to Battambang, you need to travel all the way back to Phnom Penh and catch another bus from there, adding at least seven hours to the journey. Let me assure you, Gentle Reader- that as arduous and uncomfortable as this sounds- in reality it is even worse.
First thing on the morning of my departure from Koh Kong, a practically empty minibus collected me from my guesthouse. I assumed that we'd spend the next twenty minutes gathering other passengers from various hotels and hostels around town. Instead we went to the bus station where the other passengers were waiting. They were all locals. As they loaded on, one of my theories was confirmed. Three jolly plump women in enormous straw hats and flowered sundresses supervised as the contents of a small home goods store was stacked nearly shoulder height into the aisle. There were also several styrofoam coolers wrapped in transparent yellow packing tape that I recognized from the dockside. This vehicle was doing double duty as a delivery van. Every time we stopped for a scheduled break, the bus would have to be halfway unpacked to let everyone out.
While it felt slightly isolated to be unable to speak with anyone, it was also a relief not to have to have opinions about politics. ( The international popular standing of our current president is exactly what you think it is. If given the vote, most people around the world would cast a ballot against Trump, even if the only other candidate was a fatal form of the coronavirus). I gazed out the window and let my thoughts drift. As we passed through the mountains, I spotted a pileated gibbon, a black furry lump with a white ringed face high in the treetops.
We stopped for lunch at about 10:30 in the morning at a local cafeteria style restaurant where the ordering process, the menu items and the service were a complete mystery to me. The food looked really good. thought about trying to order something, but I wasn't actually hungry. I sipped from my giant bottle of water and watched the blindingly fast action until it was time to re board.
As the bus entered the boundaries of Phnom Penh, I sat in the space allotted to me (the boundaries of my seat and not one millimeter more) and started to worry.
I hadn't purchased my connecting ticket to Battambang. Would there be enough time? Would traffic hold us up? What if the bus left before I arrived? Why wasn't I able to book the entire itinerary at once? Just how big is Phnom Penh anyway? Shouldn't we be there already? These comforting thoughts ran in a loop for about an hour until about 1:30 when I was dumped out on a street corner, sold a ongoing ticket and whisked away in a tuk tuk to the next bus station in a dizzying blur. My ticket said that my departure was at 2:30. The clerks examined this and began what appeared to be a lively debate. Two minutes later, they plucked the offending piece of paper from my fingers and replaced it with one written entirely in Khmer aside from the numbers "13" and "2:45" . The clerk prodded the number thirteen. "Seat number" she beamed helpfully. This meant that 2:45 was the departure time. Adding the customary fifteen minutes for "tropics time", I could grab a coffee and a bite and still have an hour to admire this particularly ugly metal bus shelter and anxiously compare the writing on my ticket to that on the poster. I'm still not sure they matched.
Sure enough, exactly at three, a full size passenger bus pulled up.
"Battambang?" I asked.
"Okay" replied someone I assumed worked for the bus company, pitching my backpack into the cargo hold without a backwards glance. I presented my ticket to the conductor who stared at it skeptically for a moment before waving me onboard with obvious disapproval. It's moments like this where it's very hard to not be able to ask any questions.
My seatmate turned out to be a young woman from the previous bus. As neither of us spoke the other's language however, our interaction was limited to vaguely pleased recognition. Someone had tried to brighten up the threadbare interior of the bus with large floral decals and blue Japanese themed curtains from the 1980's. This didn't work. We were on our way. I tried to pass the time by looking out the window, but the curtains were kept religiously shut by my companion. Looking across the aisle didn't help, as that seat was occupied by a teenage girl. Her reaction to being evidently leered at by an older foreign guy was entirely appropriate.
The bus stopped a few times to let more people on. I assumed we were at full capacity, but then they started setting plastic chairs in the aisle. We made a brief stop to use the bathroom and buy snacks. I didn't recognize most of what was on sale and decided that being trapped on crowded public transportation for hours with no on board toilets was not the ideal time to experiment with new foods. My seatmate offered me a hard-boiled egg that was, as far as I could tell, was prepared in pepper. It wasn't bad, but I wouldn't have bought a whole bag of them. She also indulged in some sort of dried seafood snack which I wasn't offered, but which clearly ought to be banned on all shared vehicles. The teenagers surrounding me on all sides amused themselves by playing Fortnight, updating their social media, and studiously ignoring me- which is precisely how things should be.
As the sun set, our driver determined that we could use some entertainment and turned on some music.
There are, as I've been able to discover, about a dozen popular Cambodian songs in rotation. They mostly consist of mournful ballads and seem to have been produced by someone who realized that rather than paying an entire band, his cousin owns a synthesizer. Over the top of a track consisting of drum machines, electro-flutes, and other alleged instrument noises, a vocalist sings. The singer is usually male although sometimes it's a woman and sometimes if you haven't finished all your vegetables, you get a duet. The singer is always sincere and emotional, provided that indigestion counts as an emotion. Each tune meanders aimlessly for about twenty minutes until it gives up and dies of ennui and the next one takes its place I haven't been able to determine the subject matter of these songs, but everybody involved seems rather upset about it.
Since writing the previous passage, I discovered the existence of Khmer rap. It's pretty good.
At around seven, about the time my guide book said that we should arrive in Battambang, we stopped for dinner. This time I was herded through the process by a benevolent waiter and managed to communicate my order through the medium of pointing . I ate a sort of chicken stew with rice. While it certainly wasn't the best meal I've eaten in Cambodia, I enjoyed it. With some assistance, I managed to pay and was crammed back on the bus.
With my appetite satiated, I could return to entertaining myself for the next few hours by worrying about whether this really was the right bus and why it was taking so long. My complete inability to ask questions was mollified by the thought that if we did cross into Thailand, someone would have to tell me.
I made my unceremonious arrival in Battambang at around eleven at night to find my hotel reservation was for one of the most comfortable and sumptuous rooms imaginable on the backpacker circuit
First thing on the morning of my departure from Koh Kong, a practically empty minibus collected me from my guesthouse. I assumed that we'd spend the next twenty minutes gathering other passengers from various hotels and hostels around town. Instead we went to the bus station where the other passengers were waiting. They were all locals. As they loaded on, one of my theories was confirmed. Three jolly plump women in enormous straw hats and flowered sundresses supervised as the contents of a small home goods store was stacked nearly shoulder height into the aisle. There were also several styrofoam coolers wrapped in transparent yellow packing tape that I recognized from the dockside. This vehicle was doing double duty as a delivery van. Every time we stopped for a scheduled break, the bus would have to be halfway unpacked to let everyone out.
While it felt slightly isolated to be unable to speak with anyone, it was also a relief not to have to have opinions about politics. ( The international popular standing of our current president is exactly what you think it is. If given the vote, most people around the world would cast a ballot against Trump, even if the only other candidate was a fatal form of the coronavirus). I gazed out the window and let my thoughts drift. As we passed through the mountains, I spotted a pileated gibbon, a black furry lump with a white ringed face high in the treetops.
We stopped for lunch at about 10:30 in the morning at a local cafeteria style restaurant where the ordering process, the menu items and the service were a complete mystery to me. The food looked really good. thought about trying to order something, but I wasn't actually hungry. I sipped from my giant bottle of water and watched the blindingly fast action until it was time to re board.
As the bus entered the boundaries of Phnom Penh, I sat in the space allotted to me (the boundaries of my seat and not one millimeter more) and started to worry.
I hadn't purchased my connecting ticket to Battambang. Would there be enough time? Would traffic hold us up? What if the bus left before I arrived? Why wasn't I able to book the entire itinerary at once? Just how big is Phnom Penh anyway? Shouldn't we be there already? These comforting thoughts ran in a loop for about an hour until about 1:30 when I was dumped out on a street corner, sold a ongoing ticket and whisked away in a tuk tuk to the next bus station in a dizzying blur. My ticket said that my departure was at 2:30. The clerks examined this and began what appeared to be a lively debate. Two minutes later, they plucked the offending piece of paper from my fingers and replaced it with one written entirely in Khmer aside from the numbers "13" and "2:45" . The clerk prodded the number thirteen. "Seat number" she beamed helpfully. This meant that 2:45 was the departure time. Adding the customary fifteen minutes for "tropics time", I could grab a coffee and a bite and still have an hour to admire this particularly ugly metal bus shelter and anxiously compare the writing on my ticket to that on the poster. I'm still not sure they matched.
Sure enough, exactly at three, a full size passenger bus pulled up.
"Battambang?" I asked.
"Okay" replied someone I assumed worked for the bus company, pitching my backpack into the cargo hold without a backwards glance. I presented my ticket to the conductor who stared at it skeptically for a moment before waving me onboard with obvious disapproval. It's moments like this where it's very hard to not be able to ask any questions.
My seatmate turned out to be a young woman from the previous bus. As neither of us spoke the other's language however, our interaction was limited to vaguely pleased recognition. Someone had tried to brighten up the threadbare interior of the bus with large floral decals and blue Japanese themed curtains from the 1980's. This didn't work. We were on our way. I tried to pass the time by looking out the window, but the curtains were kept religiously shut by my companion. Looking across the aisle didn't help, as that seat was occupied by a teenage girl. Her reaction to being evidently leered at by an older foreign guy was entirely appropriate.
The bus stopped a few times to let more people on. I assumed we were at full capacity, but then they started setting plastic chairs in the aisle. We made a brief stop to use the bathroom and buy snacks. I didn't recognize most of what was on sale and decided that being trapped on crowded public transportation for hours with no on board toilets was not the ideal time to experiment with new foods. My seatmate offered me a hard-boiled egg that was, as far as I could tell, was prepared in pepper. It wasn't bad, but I wouldn't have bought a whole bag of them. She also indulged in some sort of dried seafood snack which I wasn't offered, but which clearly ought to be banned on all shared vehicles. The teenagers surrounding me on all sides amused themselves by playing Fortnight, updating their social media, and studiously ignoring me- which is precisely how things should be.
As the sun set, our driver determined that we could use some entertainment and turned on some music.
There are, as I've been able to discover, about a dozen popular Cambodian songs in rotation. They mostly consist of mournful ballads and seem to have been produced by someone who realized that rather than paying an entire band, his cousin owns a synthesizer. Over the top of a track consisting of drum machines, electro-flutes, and other alleged instrument noises, a vocalist sings. The singer is usually male although sometimes it's a woman and sometimes if you haven't finished all your vegetables, you get a duet. The singer is always sincere and emotional, provided that indigestion counts as an emotion. Each tune meanders aimlessly for about twenty minutes until it gives up and dies of ennui and the next one takes its place I haven't been able to determine the subject matter of these songs, but everybody involved seems rather upset about it.
Since writing the previous passage, I discovered the existence of Khmer rap. It's pretty good.
At around seven, about the time my guide book said that we should arrive in Battambang, we stopped for dinner. This time I was herded through the process by a benevolent waiter and managed to communicate my order through the medium of pointing . I ate a sort of chicken stew with rice. While it certainly wasn't the best meal I've eaten in Cambodia, I enjoyed it. With some assistance, I managed to pay and was crammed back on the bus.
With my appetite satiated, I could return to entertaining myself for the next few hours by worrying about whether this really was the right bus and why it was taking so long. My complete inability to ask questions was mollified by the thought that if we did cross into Thailand, someone would have to tell me.
I made my unceremonious arrival in Battambang at around eleven at night to find my hotel reservation was for one of the most comfortable and sumptuous rooms imaginable on the backpacker circuit
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