A glimpse into what a travel day is like.
We begin in Bangkok Thailand at 5:45 a.m loading our bags onto the truck to drive to the bus station. Our wonderful logistics men have already set up for the most part our travel for the day and the rest of us have little to no idea what will be going on. 6:30 a.m we arrive at the bus station drag all our packs off the truck and wait for our bus to come. Since the bus is not supposed to come for another hour it is now time to somehow find coffee. Usually there’s a coffee shop somewhere around any type of travel situation and in this case that was true as well, only since I have already used up all of my baht but a few change I am now dumping out my purse and getting people’s left over change just to split an ice coffee.
All right so then the bus comes at around 7:30, perfect, except there are 45 of us and 43 seats, but really this is no big deal. So Billy sits in this weird closet thing in the way back of the bus and Rachel just sleeps right on top of the left over luggage on the ground that didn’t make it in the bottom of the bus. I’m sitting with Sarah in the very back right outside the toilet on broken seats that fling forward and are just basically not nailed into the ground; we are now in for a joy ride to Cambodia.
Every time we traveled on a bus in Africa there was never a toilet on the bus, you just had to always hold it, but I’m not sure what’s worse no bathroom or a toilet on the bus. It might have been the worst smell that only got worse when someone opened a can of tuna to eat for lunch.
So for the first part of that ride no one could figure out where the light was for the bathroom and the door wouldn’t really stay closed so you were literally going to the bathroom in a black hole with the threat of the door flinging open. That did happen but just once this ride, the door came flying open, still really makes me laugh to think about that. So ya the back seat of the bus consisted of trying not to throw up bc of the bathroom smell, checking on Billy every now and then who was once again sitting in a closet in the back, and watching the movie brides maids.
We get to what we assume to be the boarder of Thailand and Cambodia around 12:30. This part is easy for us because we all just pass our passports up and our two logistics men bring them inside to get Visas for everyone. We are stopped at this restaurant that is full of foreigners, either Americans or Europeans. There is a lady doing yoga right out front and chanting. I think she was casting a spell. Our bus now drives for about 2 more seconds and drops us off at an intersection in the road. All of us are now off the bus with our packs on walking to the boarder. 45 Americans with packs, walking single filed through traffic and people to Cambodia.
We now get to the boarder of Cambodia. Oh the boarder, what a fun place it is. We wait for about 3 hours in various lines getting things stamped and signed. In reality though most boarder crossings done by bus are usually an adventure, this boarder adventure entering Cambodia consisted of walking to the boarder, waiting in lines for hours, holding all our stuff, and needless to say sweating a whole bunch, probably the exact same way Angelina Jolie enters into Cambodia.Oh and here’s a fun fact there’s a Tropicana Casino/hotel at the Cambodian boarder, I just never would have guessed. Anyway after arriving in Cambodia we get on another bus and drive about 8 hours to the Capital, to a sweet surprise of a hotel bed (of course to be shared with other people) and a hot shower. At this point it’s 11:30 pm. Nothing too out of the usual for traveling, but maybe this helps you picture what travel days are like. So fun, right
