Today was one of those travel days that you hear about just hope never happens to you...I guess we weren't so lucky. Had to be at the internet cafe at 8AM so we could leave Don Det and make our way down to Phnom Phen, Cambodia. Got there at 8AM and it was a complete mess...they had no idea who was going where, only had 2 boats to shuttle people to the main island...total chaos! We sat around for about an hour which was good for Mike since he misplaced his camera and had some time to go looking around for it...no luck finding it. At least it was a new memory card so loss was minimal. After piling onto a boat which was way overcrowded, we made our way across and onto a bus. The bus to the Laos/Cambodia border was comfortable...everyone sad they were leaving Laos, but anxious to see what Cambodia had to offer. Made the border crossing with no problems...got a visa on arrival, passports stamps and boarded the coach bus headed to Phnom Phen...this is where the fun begins....
The bus was sold out and they didn't have enough room for everyone's luggage. The driver told those who couldn't fit their bags underneath to bring it on board with them...not sure what he was thinking since every seat was taken. Anyways, we made it work out somehow and we were on our way...so we thought. He gets up and says the bus died so we need to give it a push start. Everybody off the bus and a push start to get us started...it worked surprisingly. About 2 hours down the road we had our first flat tire...they reacted quickly and changed it within 30 minutes so we didn't have to deal with the heat for that long. Back on our way we made a long stop at a small village so they could repair the tire and we continued on. We got into Kratie about 3 hours late and after an ATM stop, the bus died again needing another push start...what else could go wrong?!? We had lunch at 4:30pm and back on the road when about an hour out of town...another flat tire. This time they moved tires around the bus and somehow got us moving again even though there were big holes in the side of the tire. We arrived at the next town, lost half the passengers as they were staying the night there before heading on a connecting bus to Siem Reap. The rest of us fought with the driver saying it was too late (11pm) and the bus not in any condition to keep going, but he insisted saying we could stay and buy new tickets again tomrorow. We stayed onboard and finally arrived into Phnom Phen at 3:45AM when we were scheduled at 7:30PM...funny how that works. Luckily found a guesthouse nearby that was open and had a room and crashed as soon as my head hit the pillow...what a day!
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