Bus to Siem Reap

While both Siem Reap and Phnom Penh have airports, I wanted to see a little of the countryside in Cambodia, so I booked a bus ticket to travel between them.  The bus was really nice - maybe one of the nicer charter-type buses I've ever been on.  Wide leather seats, window shades, air conditioning and a big TV at the front. We watched several movies including Fast & the Furious 6 (I remember why I missed 2-5), Ice Age and GI Joe. It was an action-packed day. Apparently this was one of the nicer bus companies and you can go cheaper and with less niceness.  But since it was still only $12, I thought the "splurge" was ok!

 

I think I already posted this picture, but I wanted to point out something specific in it.  Under the red umbrella closest to the yellow road sign, there are some bottles on a stand.  Those are gasoline. I guess they have regular gas stations somewhere too, but I never really encountered them. Everywhere they sold gasoline like this in unmarked bottles on the side of the road.  The moto and tuk-tuk drivers would stop and fill up with them.  My driver did it one day with me along - that's when I first realized what it was!

Typical scenes we passed throughout the day.  Many roadside stands and street food like this with picnic tables and plastic chairs.  The houses behind were also very typical and similar to what I showed from the silk shop visit.  Raised on stilts with simple wood sides and tin roofs.  

We made two pits stops during the drive.  This was the first and was like a tropical travel stop. They had restrooms, a restaurant and a convenience shop with cold drinks and snacks.  The restrooms were pretty basic, no toilet paper but western-style toilets.  Yay!  All of my hotels of course had western toilets.  Most public places I went were quite touristy, so they usually had options of both western or squat toilets.  Very few had toilet paper, so I carried my own Kleenex packets everywhere.

The second stop was a similar place but was just a restaurant. I had some fried rice for lunch and it was pretty good! The entire drive took seven hours. The distance was about 200 miles, so yeah, we were driving pretty slow!  They say the road is paved, but I would say it was "paved." It was 1-2 lanes of pavement, with another 2 lanes of dirt road on either side. So the bus shared the road with other buses, cars, trucks and lots of motos and tuk-tuks. It was also quite rough payment, so the ride was bumpy.  I really did enjoy it though - it was nice to sit on a cool bus and just see the countryside go by.  Here are a couple more pictures from the day...