Arrival in Siem Reap

I wish I had some better news about this trip. 

Side note: I hate the smell of burning garbage, I also don’t enjoy the fact that they prefer US dollars over their own currency Reil’s and wish that we were getting ripped off left right and centre. Soon this poor country will be running on American dollars. 

The bus system sucks here, when we got stuck in Stung Treng it was a company called Sorya.

This time we decided to take a bus through the local bus company called Rith Mony. 

Both times it has been a disaster, I am a little concerned about the next bus excursion. 

Trying to get here was a long excruciating journey, after setting off from our guesthouse at 6:45am after 3 hours of sleep we got on a moto bike to the bus station. We ended up leaving 10 minutes late, on our way we stop to pick up people. I was wondering where they were all going to sit, the bus driver and his posse pulled out tiny plastic stools for these locals to sit in the aisle.  I overheard that it is ½ the price to sit uncomfortably squished between everyone.  I felt bad but annoyed since the man sitting next to me had decided to use my arm rest to sleep on. Also the stupid seat was broken and didn’t recline....but it was better than being one of the 3 Cambodian people standing for 12 hours. 

About every two hours for the next 8 hours we stop for bathroom breaks and food.

By 3:30pm we were told to take our bags off the bus and wait for the connecting bus to Siem Reap. For some reason Karrie and I was the only ones that got off the bus for the switch.

The man said 10 minutes, 3:40pm. 

We did however did try sticky rice, beans and coconut shavings stuffed into a bamboo shoot. This was tasty.

The man said 30 minutes, 4:10pm. The bus left. Now it was just us at the local transfer point. After waiting awhile we got worried that the bus wasn`t coming for us. I asked the lady at the fruit stand that spoke a reasonable amount of English.

The fruit stand lady said 6pm... 6pm came and went. We asked the waiter since we had time to eat dinner here. 

The waiter said 7:30pm....nothing happened. 

8:00pm the bus shows up, everyone and t he bus driver gets off the bus to eat, hit the bathrooms and stretch their legs. 

8:45pm we finally get on the bus and we are moving. Due to the lack of seating we were placed at the front of the double decker bus on the second level. There was very little room.

10pm we were told that we could move to two free seats since the people had gotten off the city before.

10:10pm we were freezing the AC was going full blast there was no avoiding it. 

12:15am after freezing for 2 solid hours we get off the bus to swarms of tuk-tuk drivers yelling at us. We are 6.25 hours late, in total we have racked up 10.75 hours....hoping to be arrive at a place on time. I have a feeling that it is going to be like this for the rest of our time in Cambodia. I really hope that it isn’t. 

12:40am we went to a fancy guest house to splurge get wifi and a swimming pool...they are full.

1am off to another guesthouse not as awesome but we`re damn exhausted.  

2am....I cannot sleep.

For a more descriptive blog post please refer to Karrie’s facebook. She said it better than I since I was just too tired to complain anymore.