Laos to Cambodia

At 8am we were standing on the river waiting for the long boat to take us to mainland from where we would be catching the bus through the border. We were happy to be leaving the island and couldn't wait to get to Cambodia. We had loved and hated Laos and although we were glad to have experienced the country we were ready to move on and probably never return.

The boat was moored a little way from the shore and we managed to walk a small plank and balance ourselves and the bags as the boat rocked from side to side in order to gain access and although we'd already had a bit of practice, this was the worst conditioned boat yet with the most unhelpful captain and it was a relief when after ten minutes sailing we finally reached the mainland shore and the welcome feel of dry land. We had to alight with no help, as always we worked together and got ourselves and our bags safely out onto the beach as the driver (captain miserable) grunted at us and waved a hand in the direction of the main street. Luckily there were a few of us and other boats had begun to arrive so we latched onto the line and formed a foreigner conga through the town/village until we found the bus stand.

The town was actually one main sandy road filled with stalls, restaurants, a couple of guesthouses, a makeshift pavement and some surprising villa style brick buildings with ornate pillars. The bus stand was actually a trestle table outside a restaurant that doubled as tour services. The tour operator was none other than the miserable boat driver who seemed to have cheered up no end taking money off people for onward travel. We all waited while various Tuk-Tuk and minivans were loaded up with travelers and their luggage all being distributed at varying locations.

Running only an hour late I was squashed into the back of a sawngthaew with another twenty sweaty bodies while Rod firstly hung off the back only to then be invited to sit up front, the luggage was thrown, literally, onto the roof and a couple of young native lads sat on top of it making sure they didn't fall while we hurtled up to the main highway in a cloud of dust and sand. Once on the main road we were herded out of the uncomfortable sawngthaew and onto the large VIP bus that was waiting patiently for us.

The VIP buses are like double deckers'. The lower deck is for the driver, storage and the onboard toilet (which was out of order) and the upper deck is the passenger seating. We were thrilled that we got the front seat in the window and a great view of the road ahead.

After travelling for around twenty minutes we could see the border in front of us. The tour guys on the bus handed out immigration forms and told us to fill them in and hand them back with our passports and $30. We questioned this and were told they would do everything for us and we didn't need to leave the bus. Not a chance! We told them we would do it ourselves and as we had stood our ground a few other passengers followed suit much to the guys' annoyance.

On arrival at the border Laos side we alighted the bus and made our way past the new grand archway and building that was under construction to a little brick building that was the current customs and immigration. We stood and queued until we came to a window, we pushed our passports through to the official inside who stamped them without even making eye contact and demanded $2 for the service because it was Saturday, had it been a week day no charge would have been incurred, we were literally paying their overtime.

With our stamp collected we passed under a barrier limbo style and walked 200 yards through no man's land into Cambodia. It was quite surreal that we were in another country after just a short walk and we found it even funnier that we had to now collect our visa approval from a small blue wooden hut.

We took our place in the queue and handed over all the necessary documents that were duly checked and approved and handed back with a smile and we were pointed along to the next hut where the visas were issued. Hurray for the Cambodian smile it instantly made us feel better so much so that we didn't mind handing over another $2 for their weekend overtime.

We did draw the line however at the health check fee. This was a table set up in between the visa huts, we had to fill in a slip of paper by ticking the boxes yes or no to existing medical conditions, once completed they were thrown onto a pile and a $1 was demanded as payment for the health check, nice try guys and all that but we refused to pay, said we didn't need the health check (and looking back this may have been a bad idea at a border where they carry guns and hadn't yet officially passed us into the country) but we moved on to the next hut without so much as an argument from them. This set a trend for our fellow passengers and nobody paid the health check $1. Oops.

At the next hut the visa was issued and stuck into our passports followed by the entry stamp and we paid our $20 fee and that was that. It made us laugh that at no point had our bags been taken off the bus and checked and we also worked out that we had saved ourselves $6 each by getting off the bus and having the experience of crossing the border ourselves.

We climbed back into our seats and settled down still buzzing from the last few minutes, we were on Cambodian soil and ready for the next part of our adventure.

We still had a very long journey ahead of us and it was around an hour of travelling along dusty roads before we started to see civilization emerging at the roadside. The roads and the landscape took us back to India and as we observed we reminisced, as much as we take each country on its own merit its hard not to compare similarities.

Our first stop was at a market in the town of Stung Treng and the Indian resemblance was again apparent. It was a fairly baron landscape with a vibrant collection of stalls compacted in the centre of a market square all covered with large patio umbrellas' and sheets of waterproof fabric, stripy patterned and once brightly coloured although now with a layer of soot that also covered the surrounding buildings like a smokers lung. The rubbish and litter lay strewn around the dirt floor and we watched as a lady searched through it collecting plastic bottles and anything recyclable she could find to sell. There were plenty of goods on offer from fruit and veg to clothes and household goods but there seemed to be many more stallholders than customers. Even though this was the case as we sat watching we saw that the stall holders were all friends and family and everyone had a smile on their face as they sat around together, joking, laughing, eating and seemingly putting the world to rights, they had a sense of purpose and community as they made the most of life in the face of adversity.

After travelling for another few hours along palm fringed dust roads and open farmland we came to another pit stop just outside the town of Kratie. It was here we experienced our first taste of Cambodian food.

It was a large open fronted building with a concrete floor lined with steel tables and plastic blue chairs. The food on offer was precooked and in large pots behind a glass counter. We joined the queue, were told what each dubious looking dish was and tried to choose the one surrounded with the least flies. I had chicken curry and rice; Rod had a packet of crackers and a coke. The curry made my taste buds explode and my mouth was filled with flavour and individual spices a million miles away from some of the bland food we had begrudgingly grown accustomed to in Laos. We had made friends with a couple from Leicester who were travelling on another bus behind ours headed to Phnom Penn. They had also stopped at this restaurant and chosen the chicken curry, they however did not experience the same enjoyment as their bowl had the chickens' feet in which are considered a delicacy. As hardy as my stomach is even I couldn't cope with the thought of that one.

Hunger satisfied we were back on the bus and on our way back along the dusty roads. The driving in Cambodia leaves a lot to be desired, we have seen a lot of erratic, dangerous driving throughout our travels but Cambodia takes the award for the worst. The drivers take the most phenomenal risks and we began to think sitting in the front window was not such a good idea after all; although our driver was actually very good and we did feel more secure in the large sturdy bus there were still a few scary moments where we flinched, curled and tensed our body and shut our eyes in anticipation of collision.

The other thing that is amusing in Cambodia is how much is crammed onto their vehicles. This is the case throughout South East Asia but Cambodians are definitely the best and most creative.

We have seen scooters and bikes piled high with wicker furniture or pulling little trailers piled ten feet high and three times their width with mattresses, water bottles, shopping etc, it's unbelievable the variety and amount of goods that can be balanced and carried.

Our favourite one in a weird way is the chickens just because it's so funny and very surreal. There is a long pole laid and secured across the handle bars with at least thirty chickens hanging from either side, upside down tied by their feet, we were horrified at first until we realized they were actually all alive. Bizarre!

It is also often the norm to see five people on one scooter, usually two adults and two small children, a baby and the weekly grocery shop. This is incomprehensible to us and no matter how many times we see it we can't take it in, especially when the child of 2 or 3 is in front of the rider (who is the only one wearing a helmet), fast asleep.

This is not just contained to the scooters it is every vehicle with trucks overflowing with huge logs, tree trunks, water, ice blocks you name it they pile it on, unsecured and then the workers who have felled, lifted and loaded the goods are sat on top. The most worrying is when open back trucks are filled full of people packed in cattle being taken to market.

We tried to capture this on camera on many occasions but only got a few shots as we usually stood there with our mouths open in amazement for a few seconds before we remembered.

The best things the scooters carry are the food stalls. They are like burger vans but are actually a side car attached to a bike with either a BBQ full of indescribable meat sticks and bags of sticky rice or glass fronted cases with noodles, sweetcorn, fruit and other tasty treats. This again is something we have experienced everywhere we have travelled and we love it.

Anyway back to the road trip ….

After dropping some of the passengers in Kratie which from what we saw was a lively place along the Mekong river full of French colonial buildings and architecture. It looked very clean and somewhat reminiscent of Luang Prabang (Laos).

We continued on along the dusty tracks that cut the road through the multi coloured, vibrant fields of rice paddies, vegetables, wheat and various other crops lined sporadically with the wooden stilt houses that had become so familiar to us with the children running out waving alongside beaming welcoming smiles at us. It was like getting a slideshow peek into their lives as we watched the crops and cattle being tended to, the buffalo used to pull the plough and carts for transport and the adolescent lads playing football while the girls sat around preening themselves and each other. An hour before sunset we finally found concrete roads which made for a smoother ride and a relief of sorts for continuing in the dark. This was short lived as we entered the town of Kompong Cham.

Kompong Cham was where the road forked and one road led to Phnom Penn and the other to Siem Reap. The bus pulled over and we alighted thinking it was another toilet stop and fishing for change as we had to pay to pee again. Then it dawned on us that we had been told we had to change buses so we hurriedly retrieved our packs and discovered the information we needed for our onward journey all before the others had got off and realized what was happening. It was like "challenge Aneka" and a military operation just so we could get a good seat; we had been left with the rubbish seats too many times by being polite.

It was a rickety old, filthy, grimy mini bus that we got on next and we bagged the front seats as we waited for the others to stop whining and griping about changing buses and how long the journey was taking and to load on accept their fate. By this time we had been travelling for ten hours and we really just wanted to get there we didn't care how. It turned out to be a good journey. The driver was sensible by Cambodian standards and the roads were quiet as it was getting late so we sped along watching "next" a Nicholas cage film in English that we enjoyed and could understand Wooh Hoo this was better than any VIP bus.

We couldn't believe it when the film finished and the driver pulled off the road and into another open restaurant for dinner. It was even more astounding when our fellow travelers who had been moaning less than two hours before about the time it was taking hopped off and sat down to enjoy another meal. We were not happy and sat seething and squatting a multitude of bugs that had broken off from the thousands (no exaggeration) that were humming around the lights in search of fresh blood.

After another forty minutes we were back on the road and watching another film, the 80's classic … Rambo!! I was so engrossed it took me ten minutes to realize it was in Thai but we watched it anyway to pass the time.

We got talking to one of the guys who helped on the bus, it turned out he was a tout, smooth talking salesman and likeable driver and his Tuk-Tuk was waiting at the bus station, he also said he could take us to a cheap room in the centre of Siem Reap. Under normal circumstances in daylight we would politely refuse these offers and have a look around ourselves but as we weren't going to arrive until midnight at the earliest we jumped at his offer and secured ourselves a ride.

Finally arriving at the bus station and the end of the line we were glad we had accepted. We were handed our bags through the back window and on our way leaving the other passengers stressed and tired, fighting their way through the baying crowd of Tuk-Tuk drivers haggling the best price, at least their bellies were full.

After 14 hours on the road we finally arrived at the accommodation which turned out to be basic, cheap & clean with hot shower and TV. It fulfilled our criteria perfectly and we didn't get charged for the ride there we loved Cambodia already. Happy Days.