Journey From Hell

We all got up nice and early for our trip along the infamous road from Siem Reap to Bangkok. I've actually heard that airlines pay Cambodia to not pave the road so they can keep in business. Cambodia is very, very corrupt! We got into the bus first at 7.30am. The road is unpaved for about 6 hours. The aircon on the bus doesn't work and it's too dusty to open a window. The guy next to me stinks of B.O. and it's still the morning. Once we're at the border no one tell us what to do or where to go so we somehow find our way through immigration, customs and then to Thai immigration and customs. Then we sit in a group outside a cafe and wait to get taken to our bus. We go in a truck - overfull - to another restaurant and wait again. They tell us 30 minutes. I predict an hour. Guess who was right? We leave at 6pm for Bangkok and have arranged to meet Jon and Ophri (our US/Israeli friends) at 10 for a drink. We get in after 10, but catch them anyway. All the guesthouses were full or really expensive and we found ourselves trudging back to good ole' Peachy who charges us just the same as before. The present us the key, but I recognise the room number on the key as the same room that had bed bugs. We got a different room. We actually stayed out till pm with J & O drinking beer and telling travel horror stories. The 2nd day I dragged Ben to the weekend market again. This time it was really, really, horribly busy. For 3 hours I tried to muster up enthusiam to buy, but all I got was a notepad for 6 baht. I can't shop anymore. I haven't been able to since I got here. It's all too much. Sorry, no one gets any presents. Ben left the shirt he bought at the place we ate. We caught the wrong bus because everyone said, "Yes" when we asked if it went to Kho San. That night we hung out with people we'd met on our travels and either arranged to meet or bumped into wandering around. There was a DJ comp on Kho San and we found ourselves in a mass of people dancing in the street. Westerners, Thai children, drunk locals, amputees with no teeth and one old man shirtless and withered, but sweating and smiling just like everyone else. Bankok is now familiar for me. We booked ourselves on to a night bus to Hat Yai - our stop on the way to Malaysia. Unfortunately the train was way too expensive.

DJ Spinnin on Ko San