11th February: Siem Reap, Cambodia to Kampot, Cambodia

After a quick breakfast, we hopped in a tuktuk across Siem Reap to the area from which the eastward buses leave. To our surprise, the bus for the first leg of today’s journey, as far as Phnom Penh, was a proper coach rather than a minibus. Even more surprising were the complementary free pastries and coffee, and, after a quick stop, lunch (at 10:20!) of fried rice.

The main interest of the journey to the capital was the traffic. It was in theory a road with one lane in each direction, but there were times when traffic just in our direction was 3-wide, plus motorbikes heading both ways on the small shoulders! People also often travelled on top of precarious loads. The most incredible were three people holding onto a motorbike, which was then itself strapped onto the back of an already overloaded truck.

After 5 hours, the skyline of Phnom Penh emerged from the otherwise flat landscape. Fancy developments on edge of the city gave it the feel of a petrostate capital. We crossed the Mekong to be dropped near Olympic Roundabout. The coach had made fantastic time, arriving as scheduled. I’d made sure to book our onward bus with the same company as each has their own office/station. Therefore, we didn’t have to cross the city but we also now had 3 hours to wait! I went to ask if there was any chance that we could get on an earlier connection to Kampot and, as luck would have it, two seats were left on a minibus leaving in 10 minutes. We even ended up together with the front seats in the end as someone didn’t turn up. A great stroke of luck!

We made a few stops leaving the capital for additional passengers and parcels. The offices of the bus companies felt like chaos to an outsider with people and freight heading all directions, but somehow it all works. To speed things up, I helped the driver pass small parcels out of the passenger window to staff who’d run out as he beeped just before pulling up. The whole thing was like an F1 pitstop! Unfortunately, most of the drivers on the road also thought they were racing drivers. Cambodian roads are definitely dangerous and, fortunately, we will now arrive before dark today.

Heading south, clouds started to slowly build until the sky looked like it could rain. Small mountains, although the biggest we’ve seen in weeks, loomed through the murk. It felt like a complete change of scene after weeks on the dry, hot, dusty plains.

Drop off in Kampot was close enough to walk to the hotel. There was still no rain, and it felt like the sky was teasing us as the humidity hung in the warm, late afternoon air. After dropping off our bags, we walked the short distance to check out the artificial river beach. We’ll have a proper wander tomorrow but, for now, our main observation was the number of swallows in the air! We sat in the square eating delicious Khmer curry with mango smoothies and watched on as thousands of birds cheeped and darted across the skies.