Bamboo bridge

01.01.2017

When I woke up and completely emptied the contents of my entire digestive system, I booked it out of there as fast as I could. The lazy receptionist was sleeping when I got downstairs, so I patiently waited for him to get up while I planned my next move.

The day before, I had asked how to get to Kampong Cham, a quieter town not far from Phnom Penh. He must not have read the words I showed him in my book, because he sent me to this luxury minivan place. It would've been nice, but the ticket man also didn't look at my book and sold me a much more expensive ticket to Kampong something else. I didn't realize until a nice lady asked where I was going, and she gasped and told me it was wrong. The bus company tried to keep my money and send me who knows where on a taxi, that I would have to pay for! What the actual eff Cambodia???

I made the bus company give me my money back and put me on another bus back to where I could get a ticket to where I wanted to go. Ugh. Infuriating.

Finally though, I found the right bus, which was a lot more like what I'm used to. Broken seat belts and blasting Khmer music the whole way.

After arriving, I walked straight to the river front and found the guest house in the guidebook was gone. This would prove to be a theme during the rest of my trip for sure. Right next door was another one which was also cheap and nice. Moon River. I slept all day, still exhausted from not sleeping on Dec. 31.

When I woke up the sun was setting. I quickly rented a bike and pedalled over the bamboo bridge that they build every year in dry season. The island it went to was quite peaceful and leafy, but it was getting dark and there were no lights. Also some kid had just grabbed my back tire and tried to make me stop for some reason. I didn't want to find out why, so I went home.

I still couldn't eat or sleep at that point so I went out to the river where they were selling simple coconut crepe things. I thought my stomach could handle that, so I grabbed one and wandered up and down the river. Mostly it was full of local teenagers and people taking breaks from their jobs at the hotels across the street.

Fancy van