Not all of my trip from Narvik to Singapore is by train. There used to be passenger trains in Cambodia but the wars and general neglect have eliminated them. There are plans to restore train service but I would not hold my breath.
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After saying goodbye to the mother of the house where I had
been staying, I took a taxi for a couple of dollars to the travel agency just
down the street from where the bus would leave.
I had arrived a few minutes early and noticed a fridge with
ice-creams for sale. I tried this thing which turned out to be ice cream in a
plastic container that you squeezed to get the ice-cream out. Weird but it worked.
Seats on the Mekong Exchange bus were pre-allocated. Mine
was 7C so I got an aisle seat next to a very pretty young Asian woman. Across
the aisle were two older Aussies. Most of the bus was filled with what I
thought were Cambodians though there were a few westerners. The bus started off
into the traffic on time at 8:30 am.
A young hostess distributed water bottles, a
box with a small bun with a sausage inside it and two forms for Cambodia. One
of the forms was a visa application, there other the typical dual entry / exit
form. The visa application no longer needed a photograph since our photo and
fingerprints would be taken at the border. I filled in the forms and handed
them over to the hostess along with $25.
The young lady next to me pulled the curtain so that the sun
would not shine on her so I couldn’t take photos. It looked like she was trying
to sleep. Behind us, some Asian snored loudly. It took about an hour for the
bus to get out of HCMC and then we were on a dual carriage way heading for the
border. For perhaps a few minutes, I could see open fields but then the road
became lined with shops and houses. The road became busy with scooters, trucks
and other buses. We trundled along about 40 mph.
I talked to the Aussie for a while. He was from
Sydney and his wife was from Northern Ireland and she sounded like it. His job
had taken him all round the world and they had lived in many places. Asia was
very familiar to them and they had been to Phnom Penh before, but this was the
first time by bus.
After another hour we reached the border. We all got out of
the bus with our hand luggage into the heat and humidity and walked into a
building where our Vietnamese exit from was collected. We handed our passport
back to the hostess, got back on the bus and we rolled forward a hundred yards
to the Cambodian immigration. We exited the bus again into a building without
air conditioning. The hostess organized our visas and then handed us our
passports. We lined up in queues and as usual I got the slow one. Each person
was photographed and finger printed (all fingers). I was the last to get back
on the bus.
The
bus then stopped for 30 minutes a couple of hundred yards into Cambodia at a
restaurant place where you could but food and drink. The Aussie bought me a
beer and I reciprocated.
The bus in the background.
We cross the Mekong River on a ferry. It looks like they are building a bridge.
We got back on the bus and headed off down a very bumpy
road. It was obvious immediately that Cambodia is quite different from Vietnam.
It is much poorer, the people look different with eyes that look like
horizontal slits as if they are squinting in the sun. Many of the houses are on
high concrete stilts.
The young lady next to me suddenly came to life and started
talking to me. She was a flight attendant for Asia Airlines and looked just as
beautiful as the advertisements would make you believe. She was Vietnamese and
was going to PP to visit her English boyfriend. She did not have anything good
to say about Cambodia, PP, or Cambodian food. She enjoyed her job with the
airline and really loved going to Sydney which she preferred to all others
including London and Paris.
She warned me not to drink the water in PP and I told her
that I had been told that beer was the answer to everything. I suggested that
she should even clean her teeth with beer and she had a good laugh at that. She
pulled back the curtain so I did manage to get some photos.
Poinciana Tree. They really look good here.
The bus arrived near a market in PP. I collected my bag,
found a tuk-tuk, agreed on a price and set off for the Russian Market where my
Airbnb was situated. The ride in the tuk-tuk was fine and it was interesting to
see how he maneuvered in traffic. We passed the infamous S-21 school where
Cambodians were tortured during the period of the Khmer Rouge and it looked
awful.
We arrived at the market and the locals pointed to where I should go. I
went down an alley, climbed some likely looking stairs and came to a locked
gate. I called out Hello and my French hostess arrived and let me in. She
showed me to my room, gave me a cold beer and introduced me to the covered area
above their apartment that overlooks the market.
Photos taken while I was riding in the tuk-tuk.
The covered area above the apartment. There
was a nice breeze that made the 99 degree heat and humidity bearable.
Roof top of the Russian Market.
I roughly measured this room top to be 80' x 40' or roughly 3000 square feet.
Vegetables for sale.
After ‘chilling out’ for a while, I decided to think about
dinner. My host had indicated an area in the market where the food was good and
also pointed out a street on the other side of the market where I could find a
travel agent to sell me a ticket for the next stage of my trip to Siem Reap.
There was also a supermarket.
I walked down through the food stalls she had suggested and
then over to the supermarket where I bought a large bottle of water, some
peanuts and a cold beer. On the way back I had dinner at one of the stalls. It
was some sort of large omelet looking thing that had ground meat and shoots
inside. It was quite delicious and cost $1. A large bunch of lettuce came with
the meal but after eating just half a leaf I remembered that I should not eat
uncooked food because the water is bad in PP. So far I have not had any ill
effects from the lettuce.
Just before I finished the meal, a huge clap of
thunder startled everybody and it poured with rain. Fortunately, the food stall
had a tent top erected so I stayed dry. After
the rain stopped, I headed back to the bnb and spent a leisurely evening
cropping photos that I had taken during the day. Unfortunately, the internet
worked with my phones but not with my
netbook so the blog had to wait until Siem Reap.
Sunset in PP which occurs a bit after 6 pm. The sun goes down quickly in the tropics.
Night scene outside the market.
