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The bus ride through Cambodia
We didn’t realize what we got ourselves into when we booked a tour from Saigon to Angkor Wat which included a bus ride from Saigon to Phnom Penh and then from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. The first leg was nice and we had a nice stay in Phnom Penh. The second leg was bizarre. We were the only non-locals on the bus and this should have told us something. Strange experiences started right after we left or even before. Because the bus was full and they wanted to accommodate everybody, they just added plastic chairs in the aisle. Then we heard this constant ringing noise for about an hour that turned out to be somebody’s alarm clock that they didn’t know how to operate. The driver finally turned it off himself. On top of that, what was supposed to be a direct bus included two stops for food in roadside shacks/restaurants and one additional “restroom” stop – only there was no restroom so everybody just got off and did their business right on the side of the bus. As we got closer to Siem Reap, we also stopped several times to let passengers out, which involved opening the bus luggage compartment and sometimes emptying it to get to that passenger’s sacks and then loading it all back. All this took excruciatingly long, but we eventually got to Siem Reap and a very nice hotel.
We didn’t realize what we got ourselves into when we booked a tour from Saigon to Angkor Wat which included a bus ride from Saigon to Phnom Penh and then from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. The first leg was nice and we had a nice stay in Phnom Penh. The second leg was bizarre. We were the only non-locals on the bus and this should have told us something. Strange experiences started right after we left or even before. Because the bus was full and they wanted to accommodate everybody, they just added plastic chairs in the aisle. Then we heard this constant ringing noise for about an hour that turned out to be somebody’s alarm clock that they didn’t know how to operate. The driver finally turned it off himself. On top of that, what was supposed to be a direct bus included two stops for food in roadside shacks/restaurants and one additional “restroom” stop – only there was no restroom so everybody just got off and did their business right on the side of the bus. As we got closer to Siem Reap, we also stopped several times to let passengers out, which involved opening the bus luggage compartment and sometimes emptying it to get to that passenger’s sacks and then loading it all back. All this took excruciatingly long, but we eventually got to Siem Reap and a very nice hotel.
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