We were so sure of the timings for the day that we leisurely lounged and gorged ourselves on a plentiful breakfast buffet. We sauntered to the bus station, strategically located 3 minutes from the hotel. (By and large, the time spent researching and planning exact locations of hotels and spots we needed to be had paid off.)
We arrived without issues, as planned, at 8:07 am, theoretically with time to spare. A pleasant ticket man asked cheerful “To Cambodia?”, we smiled and thought to ourselves “What a smooth start to a relaxing day on the bus”. How wrong we were...
The first sign of trouble occurred when he confirmed that we were there for the 9:45am bus.
“Um... nope. Have printed tickets for a bus to Cambodia departing at 8:30am?”
“Oh....you need to see my colleague in the back.”
Colleague in back was the only unpleasant person in all of Vietnam. She insisted repeatedly that they had sent me the notice of the time change from 8:30am to 8:00am. She continued to assureme that her company had sent me an email 6 months ago about the time change. After cycling through this dialogue 3 times I shifted us into problem solving mode with this query: “When is thenext bus to Cambodia?”. She couldn’t resist mentioning one more time that they had notified me. I took the high road and sat patiently while she changed our booking to the 9:45am bus. Only after she was delivered breakfast (soup) and a reasonableamount of time did I ask if there would be room on that bus. She confirmed and we went for a walk.
This was a little hiccup, we will arrive a couple hours later, no harm no foul.
At 9:25 we boarded and were told firmly to sit in our “assigned seat » probably a sold out bus, we were lucky to get spots. Not! By the time we left there were only 12 people in a 45 passenger bus. Anyway, we are off and enjoying the journey...A/C... wifi... perfection. Until...
On the bus we were required to surrender our passports and $35 USD each to a non customs person who left the bus, requiring us to attempt to cross sans passport and sans visa. He did come through in the end and took care of everything for us. When we got back on the bus our bus driver said: “I have some news, lucky, unlucky, I don’t know”. He was referring to the fact that our bus’ paperwork was not in order and could not drive in Cambodia. So we waited in some kind of “no man’s land” without passports and we were ordered to wait for “another bus-20 minutes”. We eventually boarded a different bus with a different driver, but this bus was legally permitted to drive. Legal driver, legal bus and all paperwork was in order now. A smooth continuation of our journey was assured.
This “new bus” was a step down in the echelon of luxury bus travel. There were many broken seats and other people’s garbage. (We later figured out that our group coming from Vietnam into Cambodia had waited 30 minutes for the next bus with our company coming from Cambodia and heading to Vietnam, in order for us to swap vehicles.)
Awoken by a piercing beeping alarm on the bus we continued to drive for a few minutes before finally pulling over to check it out. Yes, we were overheating and this drive and stop the engine to “cool down bus, heat up passengers” continued 4 times before we were given options.
Pulled off to the side of the road, our bus driver proceeded to flag down and coordinate rides for all passengers n a variety of modes of transportation. We opted for the seemingly empty and presumptuously spacious mini van. We were a group of 4 travelers with luggage. After intense roadside negotiations we bid farewell to our driver opened the door to the mini van to find a small family already living inside the van. We squished in the back row making for a total of 4 tourists, a mom with a baby, a random guy and a driver. Away we went. This is about the same time that we lost the pavement on the road. We were really missing the shock absorbers and wifi on the bus.
The driver stopped often, sometimes for food, other times for gas or washrooms but only ever forthe driver. He also stopped to pick up more people. There were 2 other people we picked up en route, bringing the total number of passengers to 10 people, including a sick baby.Everyone had a cell and was in a video conference with others throughout most of the journey. There was a lot of talking very loudly as each person was trying to hear and be heard. The crying baby did not help.
We eventually made it into Phnom Penh about 6 hours late. We figured out that our driver wasn’t just a good samaritain, driving the “highways of Cambodia” rescuing stranded tourists, he was a Grab driver (like Uber) and this was his job. That would also explain his confidence playing fast and lose with the gas pedal and our lives. Our original bus driver paid him well to “continue us on our journey”. Unfortunately the price did not include a drop at our hotel but rather some random spot that was good for him. We walked and walked late at night in Phnom Penh and finally found our hotel.
To answer our bus driver’s question about lucky or unlucky, I am going with lucky! What a day!
No comments:
Post a Comment