June 11: Phnom Penh

Back in Phnom Penh for the night, so I'm catching up on e-mail and blogging before heading out for a late lunch or early dinner at Friends, the restaurant I wrote about last week and then an early night. I'm not sure what time my bus leaves tomorrow, but I think it's on the order of 6:30 a.m.

Hopefully tomorrow's trip will be less interesting than today's was. That's not to say it was a bad trip today, just not what I was expecting.

On my way to Kampot, we took a direct route from Phnom Penh, covering the 144 km in something like 3.5 hours. Naturally, since I was coming back to Phnom Penh with the same bus company, I assumed we'd take the same direct route back.

No such luck.

Ten minutes outside Kampot, the bus came to a stop, and everybody got off. Then they grabbed their bags from under the bus. The two other foreigners and I followed suit, not really knowing why, but understanding that the bus wasn't going any further. With backpacks slung over our shoulders, we crossed a small wooden bridge that apparently is strong enough to carry an empty car -- they were discharging their passengers before going across the bridge -- but not much else, and certainly not a bus.

Fortunately, there was another bus waiting for us on the other side of the bridge, and we were once again on our way to Phnom Penh via Kep, on Cambodia's southern coast. I'm actually glad we went via Kep; I had thought about paying the city a visit, but in the end decided it was more of a Shelly thing than a Greg thing. Shell would have loved the beaches there, and I would have enjoyed exploring the old French villas that still dot the shoreline.

After stopping every ten minutes to pick up or drop off passengers, our driver, who bore more than a passing semblance to Steve Buscemi, took offense at something on the shoes of one of the French women who had just gotten on the bus. He shooed them off the bus, made them change their shoes, got out a bottle of water and a roll of paper towels, and scrubbed down the aisle before letting them back on. What Steve saw is a mystery to me, as I didn't see or smell anything.

Eventually, we were back on track, onto a gravel road, and picking up passengers left and right, eventually turning onto a new highway with a marker showing we were now actually eight kilometers further from Phnom Penh than we had been at the beginning of the day. An couple hours later, about the time we pullled into our rest stop, the driver was on his cell phone complaining that he was having trouble shifting into gear. (This is just my interpretation of the call, of course, based on the fact that he was having trouble shifting, and he was on the cell phone.) Good thing, I thought, that I don't have any plans for this afternoon.

But after half an hour, we were back on the road, speeding towards Phnom Penh, apparently doing just fine in high gear, when we came upon an empty bus coming our direction. This caused our driver to pull over, the other driver to execute a U-turn in the middle of the highway, and all of us to shuffle back off the bus, pick up our bags again, and carry them to the new bus, which was now parked a few meters in front of us.

We were all of 30 km from town at this point.

The rest of the trip went smoothly, the hotel met me a the bus station, and I walked into the Internet cafe just as it started to rain. Let's hope I don't get too wet.