So, I survived the trip from Chiang Mai to Siem Reap - a 27-hour, 300km bus ride across Thailand and into Cambodia. But barely. Here's a handy travel tip for Thailand. If you're gonna take a "VIP" bus overnight from one side of the country to another, pack your thermals, earplugs, a four-season sleeping bag (including liner), a pair of woollen socks, and some of that thick cream made from whale blubber that English Channel swimmers use to protect themselves from frostbite. VIP means you get luxuries such as: absurdly and gratuitously violent`B movies (in Thai); a pack of Frito Lays (with less than 1/4 potato of crisps in it. How mean!); Soy milk at breakfast-time (delicious); a cute waiter in a suit and, most importantly, air-conditioning that's so savage you'll shut your eyes and think of Greenland. By the time I got to sleep I was as stiff as a board, and had resorted to surreptitiously fixing the thermostat at a rest-stop and stealing an extra couple of blankets from the back of the bus. I arrived at the next major town 12 hours later, and hopped on a bus to the border, only to be told by the conductor that I needed to stop at the Cambodian consulate en-route to get my visa, as they weren't available at the border. He was wrong, and the consul wasn't there anyway, so I spent an hour or so next to the highway waiting for the next bus and working on my deep-breathing lessons.
I finally got the bus and arrived at the border town a couple of hours later. In this part of the world, some entrepreneurial soul is always ready to help out, and a guardian angel in the form of a middle-aged Thai woman in a silk suit, complete with Armani specs and fingernail-sized mobile phone, got her friend to come collect me and sort my visa out, all for a couple of $. I was then given a ride to the border by two Norwegians who ran a cruise company in one of the sleazier corners of Thailand. One of them was hot, the other not. Both were clearly interested in only one thing - cheap Thai beer - and I lost them at the border.
The Cambodia border town, Poipet, was like my entire journey through India condensed into a few acres and minutes. Utterly chaotic. Hordes of children begging and picking pockets without even pretending not to, and a barrage of people offering rides to Seim Reap, the closest town to Angkor Wat. By this time, I'd missed the last bus (it leaves at midday because they don't drive at night), so was compelled to do the 150-odd kilometre trip by taxi. For about $10, which, I learned later, was expensive. I didn't care, and found the whole thing evocative of the scene in Star Wars where Luke, Leia, Hans and Chewbacca are about to escape from the Death Star and, eyeing the Millenium Falcon the Princess jibes "Are you sure that old pile of junk's gonna get us outta here?" Bartering for a decent rate meant saying yes, then no when I discovered that there'd be a 50k detour. So I'd got up and out of about three cars and trucks, when a Cambodian policeman escorted me politely to one that I'd left earlier. The Cambodian Falcon took the form of a beat-up Toyota Camry which had once, perhaps, been white, but the chassis had long been abandoned to the elements as the rest disintegrated, the resultant effect being Camry au Pollock. It was on this journey that I discovered just how far I'd come since leaving Europe last November. I've always, as most of you know, had a bit of a reckless streak, but this time actually managed to surprise myself, the main surprise being that I wasn't scared when, in fact, I should have been. The trip from Varanasi to Gaya six months ago - with Justin and Margaret, during which we'd travelled 9 hours in a small grocery van on what must be the worst road in Asia, hurtling past abandoned and burnt-out trucks, listened to our drivers bickering (obviously about which of them should jump ship) in Hindi, and had an army escort for the last, limping, leg of the trip - was scary, but I was in the company of people saner than I. Marginally. Yesterday's taxi-driver was an eighteen-year-old Cambodian who'd salvaged this ol' car so that he could drive his mum and a hundredweight of lychees cross-country, financed by some daft foreigner. Me!! They didn't speak English. I didn't speak Cambodian. The child-locks were broken on the car, so the passenger windows and doors didn't open. I realized I was being given an opportunity to practice being steadfast and to look on the bright side of things, so I did just that. The road was first built a thousand years ago, and has benefited from little maintenance since. Tarmac exists for a mile or so either side of the major towns, elsewhere patches of ancient brick break through the compacted red dust, adding a few extra vibrations to a ride that, on the whole, is the equivalent of being put through a large food processor or one of those fairground rides you'd only do when drunk, or in love, or both. All this, however, was redeemed by the view through the dirt-spattered windows. Incroyable, the French must've thought when they colonizedCambodge. The landscape between Poipet and Siem Reap is flat, with the odd knoll rising unobtrusively from the plains. Miles of rice-paddies occupy most of this region, but Cambodia is still peppered with millions of landmines and, a lot of land lies unused. Thousands of people who continue to be mutilated and maimed by them), Consequently, the sky is huge, and during the rainy season vast, variegated mountains of cloud erupt from the horizon. The sun behind is mercilessly strong, and their edges are outlined in brilliant white. Shadows play across the surface of the clouds, and the effect is completely psychedelic - think mile-high lava lamps. As night fell, the sky changed color dramatically as it filled with rain. The monsoon season has arrived in Cambodia, and heavy rainfall is a daily event. For this reason, nobody drives at night along these roads. Except, of course, for me. By the time we reached Siam Reap, having stopped a couple of times to offload lychees and collect a couple of very hip teenaged Cambodian sistas with mobile phones and Diesel jeans, I'd imagined a hundred different deaths, including death by drowning. At one point, hurtling down the pot-holed highway, we swerved so hard to avoid a crater that the car turned 180 degrees. By this point I had transcended hysteria and was dead calm. So, instead of screaming and assuming crash position, I turned to my driver and coolly raised one eyebrow. "Hole!!!" he shrieked. But eventually we reached the tarmac and, five hours after setting off, reached Siem Reap.
I finally got the bus and arrived at the border town a couple of hours later. In this part of the world, some entrepreneurial soul is always ready to help out, and a guardian angel in the form of a middle-aged Thai woman in a silk suit, complete with Armani specs and fingernail-sized mobile phone, got her friend to come collect me and sort my visa out, all for a couple of $. I was then given a ride to the border by two Norwegians who ran a cruise company in one of the sleazier corners of Thailand. One of them was hot, the other not. Both were clearly interested in only one thing - cheap Thai beer - and I lost them at the border.
The Cambodia border town, Poipet, was like my entire journey through India condensed into a few acres and minutes. Utterly chaotic. Hordes of children begging and picking pockets without even pretending not to, and a barrage of people offering rides to Seim Reap, the closest town to Angkor Wat. By this time, I'd missed the last bus (it leaves at midday because they don't drive at night), so was compelled to do the 150-odd kilometre trip by taxi. For about $10, which, I learned later, was expensive. I didn't care, and found the whole thing evocative of the scene in Star Wars where Luke, Leia, Hans and Chewbacca are about to escape from the Death Star and, eyeing the Millenium Falcon the Princess jibes "Are you sure that old pile of junk's gonna get us outta here?" Bartering for a decent rate meant saying yes, then no when I discovered that there'd be a 50k detour. So I'd got up and out of about three cars and trucks, when a Cambodian policeman escorted me politely to one that I'd left earlier. The Cambodian Falcon took the form of a beat-up Toyota Camry which had once, perhaps, been white, but the chassis had long been abandoned to the elements as the rest disintegrated, the resultant effect being Camry au Pollock. It was on this journey that I discovered just how far I'd come since leaving Europe last November. I've always, as most of you know, had a bit of a reckless streak, but this time actually managed to surprise myself, the main surprise being that I wasn't scared when, in fact, I should have been. The trip from Varanasi to Gaya six months ago - with Justin and Margaret, during which we'd travelled 9 hours in a small grocery van on what must be the worst road in Asia, hurtling past abandoned and burnt-out trucks, listened to our drivers bickering (obviously about which of them should jump ship) in Hindi, and had an army escort for the last, limping, leg of the trip - was scary, but I was in the company of people saner than I. Marginally. Yesterday's taxi-driver was an eighteen-year-old Cambodian who'd salvaged this ol' car so that he could drive his mum and a hundredweight of lychees cross-country, financed by some daft foreigner. Me!! They didn't speak English. I didn't speak Cambodian. The child-locks were broken on the car, so the passenger windows and doors didn't open. I realized I was being given an opportunity to practice being steadfast and to look on the bright side of things, so I did just that. The road was first built a thousand years ago, and has benefited from little maintenance since. Tarmac exists for a mile or so either side of the major towns, elsewhere patches of ancient brick break through the compacted red dust, adding a few extra vibrations to a ride that, on the whole, is the equivalent of being put through a large food processor or one of those fairground rides you'd only do when drunk, or in love, or both. All this, however, was redeemed by the view through the dirt-spattered windows. Incroyable, the French must've thought when they colonizedCambodge. The landscape between Poipet and Siem Reap is flat, with the odd knoll rising unobtrusively from the plains. Miles of rice-paddies occupy most of this region, but Cambodia is still peppered with millions of landmines and, a lot of land lies unused. Thousands of people who continue to be mutilated and maimed by them), Consequently, the sky is huge, and during the rainy season vast, variegated mountains of cloud erupt from the horizon. The sun behind is mercilessly strong, and their edges are outlined in brilliant white. Shadows play across the surface of the clouds, and the effect is completely psychedelic - think mile-high lava lamps. As night fell, the sky changed color dramatically as it filled with rain. The monsoon season has arrived in Cambodia, and heavy rainfall is a daily event. For this reason, nobody drives at night along these roads. Except, of course, for me. By the time we reached Siam Reap, having stopped a couple of times to offload lychees and collect a couple of very hip teenaged Cambodian sistas with mobile phones and Diesel jeans, I'd imagined a hundred different deaths, including death by drowning. At one point, hurtling down the pot-holed highway, we swerved so hard to avoid a crater that the car turned 180 degrees. By this point I had transcended hysteria and was dead calm. So, instead of screaming and assuming crash position, I turned to my driver and coolly raised one eyebrow. "Hole!!!" he shrieked. But eventually we reached the tarmac and, five hours after setting off, reached Siem Reap.
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