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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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“Have you ever traveled while you're really sick?” |
Chiang Mai to Siem Reap by Road
Feb 1-2, 2007
Have you ever traveled while you're really sick? Or worse, travel for 27 hours from Chiang Mai, Thailand to Siem Reap, Cambodia via Bangkok while you are really sick? Well, don't try. It's really tough, especially if the trip consists of 3 different stages. First you have to suffer in a bus full of coughing and sneezing people all night (Chiang Mai to Bangkok). There you can't sleep because of the snorers. After that, try being squished in a minivan full of 9 people (Bangkok to Cambodia border). The next stage is a bone rattling journey in a 29-seater old rickety bus on terrible gravel roads for 6 hours and only 150 kilometers (border to Siem Reap). Not a good trip to experience while you have a splitting headache. The first leg of the trip from Chiang Mai to Bangkok isn't bad, quite nice to be honest. They provide you with nice blankets (that you hope are washed), a neck pillow, and food and drinks. What’s not pleasant is the bumpy road and the freezing cold air-con they say isn't the slightest bit chilly. (A-HEM, while they say this they have deep-freeze winter jackets on). This is not pleasant especially, as I mentioned before, if you are sick. That trip will always be labeled the SARS trip in my imagination because of the sicknesses being spread around. It sounded like at least 15 people had a whopping cough in that bus. NOT good.
The second leg from Bangkok to the Thai border was on a mini-bus. After we arrived at the border the chaos started. There was mass confusion as to which was the right vehicle for the third leg of the trip from the border to Siem
Reap. It was just like Kenya where you go wherever and HOPE the right bus takes you to your destination. We were first told to go into a minivan instead of going on the 29 seater bus because we had reservations at a hotel. BUT, there were 6 other people that were also supposed to come in the 8 seater minivan. HUH? That doesn't work, we thought. Then our guide said "will you pay $5 more per person and go in a taxi?" "No way, we paid everything already" was my dad’s response. After about two hours we finally got to set off from the border but in the same 29 seater bus that we had originally been in.
A long 6 hour ride lay before us. The road was as bad as Kenya's roads with potholes and loose gravel. Looking out the window makes you grimace. Everything is covered in a layer of dust; the people, the shacks, the cars, the food, anything you see. Even all the plants and trees were dusty brown instead of green. We felt so sorry for the Cambodians. The civil war made this poverty and it will take a long time to recover again. Later we were to see that the poor little kids have to go help earn a living at an early age. They sell little knick knacks wherever there are tourists and are lucky if they sell something to one tourist. It is barely enough to survive. After seeing this scene over and over again for about two hours, it turned dark out. In the distance, fires are ablaze. “Why?” I ask my mom. “To clear the land” she said. That is how they clear the land of the remains of old crops. Imagine all the smoke pollution added to the dust. It is really sad. Seeing this miserable scene outside our window made us wonder what our hotel would be like in Siem Reap. We didn’t expect much.
At 9:00 we finally arrived in Siem Reap and got transferred to our luxurious hotel. Actually, it is pretty basic by western standards but it sure seems like luxury compared to what we saw on our bus ride here. Twenty seven hours of traveling by bus is enough for me. I dread the trip back.
previous travel blog entry
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