Siam Reap to Thailand Part 1

Feb 26th

Where do i start?

Imagine an indiana jones film where you see a clapped out minibus with loads of people crammed on it with goats and chickens everywhere banging down a dirt track with clouds of dust everywhere. Well you are half way there.

So one of these turns up and collects us. Thank god this is only a transfer bus i joked with jonnie as it dropped us off at the bus stop..............

The next one to turn up was even worse, it had a window missing, half the front had fallen off or was smashed in, there was a hole in the floor and had wood for springs. Oh and it would not start. I think it was built about 1922.

Another transfer bus? After an hour we realised it was not. Take the worst farmers lane back in the UK and you have the main road to the border of thailand and the dust is unreal. By the time we stopped half way we were brown and had lost a stone due to the sweating, and felt like we had done 10 minutes with Bruce Lee.

In order to try and keep the dust down, they have lorries that drive and spray water along the road. Fine. But cast your mind back to the minibus description........."window missing".

so every now and again we got blasted through the window with river water.

The bus would not start after the stop, so we all had to jump start it.

Again a big shame about the camera, as i had loads of photos of all of this.

So 4 hrs later we arrive at phoi Phot which smells the same as your bin does in the summer. Through the border and in to thailand where we wait for the next bus to take us back to Pattaya.

Jonnie had only 6 days left of his holiday, so we agreed to go back there until he went. Remember i had to stay with him as i lost his card, so he needed me for money.

Don't get me wrong, i love it there but i needed to start economising, and new that Jonnie would want to go out with a bang. But what the hell, you only live once.

So we waited for the bus, and 2 hrs later a nice luxury coach pulls up. we felt a bit awkward as we stunk and had changed colour due to the dust.

There were a lot of people queueing and we wondered how we were all going to fit on.
It was a double decker where the downstairs bit is like the lounge area of a caravan with a big seat around the edge and a big space in the middle.

So the seats fill up and then they start getting these little kiddies plastic stools out and start putting them in the middle of the floor.....

"wo wo wo" I say (Peter Kay encore) there was no way i was sitting on a stool for another 3 hrs. As always we had some bus comedy and this was it for today.

So after some friendly shouting we got our bags off and stormed back to the bus station.

I was fed up that we had wasted 2 hrs when i could have been have a nice bath, Jonnie on the other hand was beside himself about wasting 2 hours of...............yes you guessed it, DRINKING.

part 2 to follow...................