I am no longer there...

...in Cambodia that is. At the moment, I'm sitting in a cafe in Bangkok nursing shopping injuries i.e. blisters, and massage injuries i.e. wrenched back muscles from when the stupid cow of a masseuse grabbed me and tried to throw me around. I specifically did not ask for a Thai style massage because I didn't want to be wrenched around and pounded like I was a big blob of sticky rice. Enough of my pain; what of my travels thus far?


Day 1
After much to-ing and fro-ing about which land border crossing to use to exit Cambodia, I chose to go the Koh Kong way. This involves a 12 hour bus trip, which can be broken into 2 stages so that's what I did. The first leg from Phnom Penh to Koh Kong includes a windy, switchbacked road across the Cardamom mountains. Given my fear of heights, I did quite well to not leap out of the bus and walk all the way. I must say the bus driver was very good, particularly for a local driver, and maintained a suitably very slow speed for all the tricky bits. Like every Asian bus driver I've ever had, he did suffer a bit from what I call 'destination fever.' This generally occurs about 50kms from the destination when the driver just wants to get to the end so he drives too fast and throws the bus around quite a bit. In Vietnam, this is also when they manage to run the highest number of motorbikes off the road for the whole trip.


The bus was full of mostly locals all enquiring about each other's weight: 'how many kilos?' seems to be the new 'hello'; and whinging about the bus ticket scams. There was also a little bit of elderly flirting and an offer of marriage, should a certain little old lady's husband die soonish. 

Koh Kong is a quaint little border town, in the border town scheme of things. I stayed at the Apex Hotel; ac, hot water and small pool for $15 a night, however the staff weren't too hot in their multiplication skills. It was very cold, about 23 degrees Celsius with a chilly breeze coming off the sea. Even the dogs were hunkered down, so I passed on a water taxi tour of the immediate coast.


Highpoints: 1) In crossing the Cardamom mountains, a protected forest it should be pointed out, someone had just chopped down a tree and the bus filled with the smell of cardamom. Unfortunately, the locals all whipped out their tiger balm and promptly overcame the gorgeous spice smell. I have no idea what that was about but I suspect something to do with funerals/death/dead bodies and thinking they will all die any moment if they don't get the offending smell away from themselves. 2) An 'elephants crossing' road sign.
Lowpoint: Aforementioned mathematic ability of receptionist. Could not calculate US$7 into Thai baht at the rate of 30 Tb to 1 USD i.e. 210b. He kept getting almost double that which of course I wasn't entertaining in the slightest, then he got very stroppy with the ensuing mathematics lesson...