One Sandal

The roads in Cambodia are horrendous. Actually, the roads from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville and Siem Reap are fine, but the road to the Thai border is atrociously bad. My minibus was an old Toyota, which leaked (it rained) and had virtually no suspension system. And we had to stop once because the battery inside the cab lit one of the seats on fire, and another time when the radiator shot some hot water into the carriage. We had to stop four times to cross rivers by ferry, and the ferries were handmade constructions of wooden planks and poles, plastic barrels, and outboard boat engines. The trip to the border took almost seven hours. To make matters worse, I took a hard landing on my keister yesterday flopping into the fishing boat used for the snorkeling tour I went on. There was only one Cambodian on the minibus, and she was about 13, but fortunately she sat next to me so I was able to stretch my legs a bit (in exchange for her using my shoulder to sleep on.) She spoke no English, but was very sweet. She got a big kick out of me using my inflatable travel pillow (one of those horseshoe shaped ones you sometimes see for sale at airports) to wedge between my left knee and the minibus wall and seat in front of me to minimize the bruising from the bumps in the road. But that didn't save my left shoulder or my right knee, which are in pain right now. (It might be about time for a Thai massage.) Cambodia was a good experience, but it sure ain't easy travelling compared to Thailand. One odd thing is that the country, in general, is more expensive than Thailand, despite being significantly poorer. Food is rarely less than one or two dollars for a rice dish, and in Thailand you can routinely find (much better tasting and safer) street food for 50 or 75 cents. Bottled water in Thailand is about 10-20 cents, there it is about 50 cents. Guesthouses are often even a dollar or two more per night. (However, I met one guy who was paying a dollar a night to sleep on some elevated wooden planks next to a bar on the beach in Sihanoukville for a dollar a night; if you have your own mosquito net, it isn't a bad way to live, really.) Sihanoukville is odd because there is all this tourist infrastructure, and not that many tourists. I was staying near a place called Serendipity Beach, and there had to be 20 different bar/ restaurants on the beach; no exaggeration, 3 out of 4 in them were empty save the staff. It was like Ko Pha Ngan, with no tourists. Really odd. But I will miss all the silly little kids peddling me crap and telling me the same silly jokes in English. And the bagettes - certainly the best enduring legacy of French colonization. Thai food is the tops, but they don't really eat bread here. Some travelers I met convinced me that 2+ additional hours of transit and finding a guest house in the dark simply wasn't worth it. Anyway, there is a night market here in town to get some food and shop (haggle) for useless junk, which I've just returned from. Very tasty street vendor food :) For those who are curious, barring a major change of heart, I think I'm skipping Vietnam and going to Laos instead. Nine days might be fun there, but I'm better off waiting to go some other time and spending three weeks or so to really get a feel for the place. I've just heard such amazing things about Laos, and being so close again by going back to Chiang Mai, it seems foolish to fail to go.