I’m not a morning person. There are few things in this world I will wake up early for. So when we were told that the only bus out of Laos and into Cambodia was at 8am, I was not impressed. I was even less impressed when they took us across the water (since we were on an island), and to a meeting point, where we had to wait about an hour for the bus. That was valuable sleeping time.

They stuffed us into a minivan, when it decided to arrive, which we had paid for in Laos to take us to Stung Treng (a nothing town, but a transit point for everything else).

At the border, we had to take out all of our bags and cart them across a stretch of about 200 meters, in the middle of which we had to visit the “Quarantine” booth, where we were made to fill out a form, and have our temperature taken, for which we had no choice but to pay $1. It was total bullshit and we were not impressed at the obvious money-grab. Thanks but actually I was perfectly aware that I was healthy and didn’t really need to pay you to point a temperature gun at my forehead which probably isn’t really accurate anyways.

Once we were across the border, and sitting in our new minivan, we had to wait for the bus to fill up before the driver would even consider leaving. A British couple we’d met back in Laos were directed by our bus driver to our bus, only to find out that they should have been on another bus. By the time our bus driver realized this, the bus they were meant to be on was chugging down the road and out of sight.

First, the driver used his cell phone to call the driver of the other bus, to tell him he’d left two people who had paid tickets for his bus behind. But the driver refused to come back for them. Then the couple and our bus driver spent the next 10 minutes arguing over whose fault it was, until finally we could see that our bus driver was fully prepared to just leave this couple at the border. No other buses transit that point, so the couple would have been stranded for the rest of the day and night. Of course, we were not going to let them remain there stranded, so a few of us got out of the minivan and tried to reason with the driver. But he would have none of it. “They’re human beings!” I cried, “You can’t just leave them stranded at the side of the road!” but he just shook his head and looked at the ground and didn’t seem to care.

Eventually, we managed to get them two seats in our bus for $5 a piece (see, money always talks). So they were OK. But it was like, welcome to Cambodia.

Our destination that day was Ban Lung, a quiet lake village in northeastern Cambodia. They told us on our bus that they would take us to meet the bus from Phnom Penh that would pass by at 2pm. They took us to the bus meeting point at 1:15pm, where we had to wait in what was probably the most uncomfortably hot conditions I’ve ever experienced. It wasn’t that it was any hotter than any other day (though maybe slightly), but the place we had to wait for 2.5 hours had no fans, and the area was untouched by wind. Amy and I were so hot that even though we weren’t thirsty, we bought water just so that we could smush the cool bottle to our foreheads. I was so hot still that I took the water and poured it down my head, something I had never before been desperate enough to do. But it sure made the day more bearable (if slightly squishier).

The bus arrived, an hour and a half after they’d told us it would. We were so glad to be out of the heat that we didn’t care. The floor of the bus was basically a pile of rotting garbage, and the seats were nowhere near big enough, but alas, we were on our way.

It was worse than it looks

The air conditioning was so weak that it didn’t come close to reaching our heads, but when the bus was moving, the air from the cracks in its sides let in a nice breeze (the windows, of course, did not open, barring one in the back). But it wasn’t even the bus that was the horrible part of the journey – the road to Ban Lung is made up of non-stop potholes so plethorous that it was more like driving over a miniature version of the Rocky Mountains. North to South. It was like this for all 3.5 hours of the journey. It was officially the. Worst. Bus ride. Ever. A Cambodian guy sitting right in front of me actually had to run to the only open window at the back of the bus and puke for a good five minutes.

You know the bus ride is horrible when the locals are puking.

So how thankful were we when we dismounted the bus, after a full 12 hours of traveling, to be greeted by the very man we wanted to see – Sophat, the manager of Lake View Lodge (which comes highly recommended by both our guidebooks, and is owned by the friend of some guy we met who said to say hi). We collapsed into his ballin’ SUV, complete with DVD player and leather seats. Sophat speaks excellent English (he’s an English high school teacher), and bears a striking resemblance to Will Smith.

Even better was when we rolled in to his guest house, an old governor’s house (like the house is old, not the governor…though he is probably old too), and were greeted by the amazingly sweet staff, and a big, clean room, with cloud-like mattresses on our twin beds, and our own bathroom – all at $5USD a night. Paradise, we thought. We hurriedly showered in the freezing cold water, and ran down for dinner (we were starving) and a nice, refreshing Angkor beer. We laughed as Sophat amused us with his tales and learned some Khmer words.

So I guess it was worth it. But never again!!

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