Originally written on November 17, 2004
Breakfast at Kim Caf? Onto sh*tty bus. Bus was late getting there. It went around the backpacker district picking up other passengers. Then back to Kim caf?45 minutes later. So glad I woke up early! Turns out two Canadian girls slept in, then we later found out they were hungover. Bus to border about an hour and a half. Stopped at gas station 20 minutes from the border. Bathroom break and time for the tourists to spend the remainder of their dong (Vietnamese currency). The bus did not get any gas. The bus pulled up at the border and a cart pulled up alongside. Two guys started unloadeding all of the bags onto a cart. They never asked if we wanted this service. Kirk and I knew this was not for free and kept our bags. Be without our bags, I don’t think so.
Before we left the bus our guide told us that we would go through three rooms at the Vietnamese border, rooms 12, 9, and 7. He also said it should take 1/2 hour. So, at 11am we all made our way to the first room. Along the way we were accosted by shouts of you change money dong to dollar by a handful of persistent women. Carrying all of our luggage,I with backpack and Kirk with two bags, as we bought too many clothes in Hoi an and were to cheap to ship them. Kirk kept this extra bag on top of his backpack (as he carried it).
Room 12 is hell’s gate, a concrete walled room with a wicker wall on the inside (with a tiny window between the wicker). One fan, on low speed is attached to the right wall and is the only mild sense of relief in the staggering heat. The climate is hot, but more importantly the conditions increase the heat. 50 people crowd in the room facing the wicker window, waiting to give the officer their passport for an exit stamp. There is no line, just a (mass) cluster f**k of people not knowing who has already given their passport to the guy at the window, nor when it is their turn to give the passport to the dude. No one moves, because no one knows how long it takes to get a stamp, so the “cluster f**k” doesn’t move and you just stand there waiting for someone to tell you what the f**k is going on. Eventually we wise up and realise that we will never reach the window. We see some people pass their passports to the front over the mass of poep;e. We follow suit and hope ours reaches the window. It does and the waiting continues..
There is no officer directing traffic or telling anyone what should be done. There are just bribe takers, scummy guys who tell you that if you pay them so much dong they will ensure the passport goes to the front of the line. There is no point in paying these guys because we came as a group so the bus on the Cambodian end has to wait for the slowest person. Money does make the world go round here because others, not from our bus, who do employ the service have their freshly stamped passports in their hot little hands very quickly. This slows down the stampling process for us cheapies. Plus, the stamping process is done at a extremely slow rate, whereby the sound the of the stamper is heard and 20 minutes later one passport is revealed. Remember there are about 50 people in a crowded sweatbox, some carrying their bags, amongst women asking us to change dong to dollar and scummy men suggesting that we pay the bribe. Every once in awhile there is mad stamping. About 7-10 stamps in a 10 second period. This sound brightens our spirt, but we soon realize it is a cruel joke.
One and a half hours later, after every asian, and every other nation from close to far proximity to Vietnam is given their stamped passport Kirk and I receive ours. During our wait one of the Canadian girls, who is the most hungover injures herself (after vomiting all morning). Her friend thinks this is very funny, so she decides to take a picture. Bad idea. Frankenstein, I.e. the the officer in charge of room 12, visible through the wicker window was very upset.Why this name, because he had a huge scar across his forehead, the doctor did a poor stitch up job and it look extra creepy. All of the guidebooks say do not photograph in any government building, and common sense tells you not to drink heavily the night before a long bus trip but what do I know?
After we finally get our stamps, we proceed to room 9 where we get our bags checked and cleared. This consisted of one guy collecting a yellow form that we got when we arrived in Vietnam. On it are things like how much money you have brought in, jewllery, bags, etc. This guy just takes the form without even looking at our bags. We could have had some small children in our 3 extra bags and he wouldn’t care. Then to room 7 where they check that your passport is stamped.
From there a hot walk past a guard post (where they check your passport one last time) and through a construction site. Crappy hard packed clay riddled with old scars of where trucks at one time where stuck. Perfect ankle twisting country especially when carrying two bags under 33 C heat. The walk was about 5-700 meters long. When we got to Cambodia we where sweating like old fat Elvis’s.
Here, we paid the officer 25 US for a 30 day visa, the whole process took about 45 more minutes of mostly waiting in the shade in a more or less orderly line. Bribery was less common here although who knows what the real cost of the visa is seeing as how I was denied a receipt. Whatever, we made it to our new bus, got on, and off we went towards Phnom Penh.
This trip was pretty, although boring. Rice patty and palm tree over and over and over. In the middle some where we had to take a ferry accross the Mekong. Our bus got on right behind a truck full of live pigs. Mmmmm bacon. But not too smelly.
Finally we arrived in Phnom Penh at about 5 PM at the King Guesthouse. The bus parked in such a way as to block us in to try and keep the bus passengers from leaving to find other accomodation. I’m sure the trip was also designed to arrive in the evening and thus discourage people wandering around. Heather stayed with the bags and I went out to roam the streets of Phnom Penh looking for a place to sleep.
After about 30 minutes of climbing up and down the dark, rubble and garbage filled side streets I finally found a decent place just down the street from where we were dropped off. I came back, got Heather and the bags, and we checked in, showered, and left to find some dinner. After looking for quite awhile, we finally settled on a greasy pizza place as it was the only thing that wasn’t serving dinner off of plastic tables for kids with short plastic chairs — apparently we weren’t in the eating out part of town. The place was dark when we got home and hit the hay. By this time the AC was broken in our room so we switched to another bigger room same price. Lights out.
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