Every once in a while, I accidentally lean my head back too far and pain shoots through my neck and I remember a very long minibus ride through Cambodia and how I was trying to sleep against the window and whenever the minibus hit a pothole, my head flopped around and then I was just drifting into sleep when we hit a huge pothole and my head whipped back too far and it's been hurting ever since.
There were quite a few tourist-type people on the ferry from Phu Quoc Island to Ha Tien, and six of us wanted to carry on to cross the border into Cambodia and head to Phnom Penh. The tourist office across the street from the ferry's arrival, er, flooded piece of land said that it would be $15 per person for a bus to Phnom Penh and the bus left at 3 pm, but given that there were 6 of us, we could make up a minibus ourselves and leave right away for the same price. So we did. There were a French/British couple, two British university students who had been volunteering in Vietnam, and S. and me.
We loaded into a nice plush minibus and headed the ten minutes to the border, which at Ha Tien is a large airy cement building with a luggage scanner inside, located on a paved road, and on the Cambodia side is two tiny buildings that you cannot enter with a wooden barrier across the dirt road. (The pavement disappears half-way between the two border posts.) Then we piled into a far less plush minibus (springs sticking up irregularly in the seats made for a veery long 5.5 hour drive to Phnom Penh) and started merrily off down the dirt road, under a clear blue sky, through the perfectly flat brilliant green rice fields. The occasional wooded hill rose at random in the distance.
After an hour or so, the bus stopped to pick someone up. We had paid for a bus to ourselves, but we said nothing, out of politeness and because you never know when someone's brother/sister/cousin/friend/mother/friend-of-a-friend/aunt/nephew/wife/in-law needs a ride. After a while, we picked up another person, and then another, and another, and pretty soon it was clear that 1. we were not getting the bus to ourselves, and 2. most of the original tourist-type people were somewhat cranky about this, as their comfortable sprawled-out space shrunk. I watched what the incoming passengers were paying ($4-ish, less as we got closer to Phnom Penh), and realized that, very possibly, the tourist agency in Vietnam had ripped us off.
The minibus continued to fill. The row facing backwards behind the driver filled up, and we rearranged our legs every-other, trying not to look directly at one another, since it is extremely awkward to stare at a person you do not know when their face is so close to your own and your legs are touching all the way along. Newcomers slid their bags of rice under the seat and one of the two women squished into the passenger seat held a baby. The tourists got crankier. The ride got longer every time we stopped. I got whiplash from the pothole and nearly whimpered at the pain of it, exacerbated by every following pothole. I didn't dare go back to sleep, but I was too tired to stay awake, after getting up at 5 am yet again. (Note: waking up before it was light: another theme of the trip.)
At long last, we got to Phnom Penh and started dropping people off. When everyone was gone but the tourists, we pulled into a petrol station and the driver said, "Here you are."
"Uh... where are we?" we asked. We hadn't the first idea. We had been told in Vietnam that the bus would take us right where we needed to go.
Or, it appeared, not.
"Just out of curiosity," the driver said, (except not quite in perfect English like this; I am taking liberties), "how much did you pay them for this trip?"
Of our $15 each, apparently $10 each got eaten in the 10 minute trip to the Vietnam border and the guy walking us across the border doing nothing, when we had visas and could have managed just fine alone. The driver on the Cambodia side, who drove us 5.5 hours to Phnom Penh, which seems like the biggest task, certainly requiring the most fuel, got $5 for each of us.
And he didn't know Phnom Penh at all, which makes sense because his route is border-city, not within city. We hauled out two different guidebooks for their maps, on neither of which we could find ourselves because we were not yet in the actual city, and after figuring out that we were on a main street that did, further into town, appear on a map (dear Cambodia: thank you, thank you, thank you, for putting the street signs in English letters as well as Khmer), I directed him to the street-o'-tourists using the Rough Guide map (never trust a Lonely Planet map; they are awful). Unfortunately, I did not know how tiny and narrow this street was, so we ended up stuck down it, causing a horrible traffic jam and din of horns and leaving the poor driver to somehow maneuver his minibus out of a barely-one-lane alley.
S. and I tipped him because we felt so bad that he had been forced to drive us all the way to our hotel without being paid adequately by the tourist agency, but I doubt it was enough to make up for his trouble.
There were quite a few tourist-type people on the ferry from Phu Quoc Island to Ha Tien, and six of us wanted to carry on to cross the border into Cambodia and head to Phnom Penh. The tourist office across the street from the ferry's arrival, er, flooded piece of land said that it would be $15 per person for a bus to Phnom Penh and the bus left at 3 pm, but given that there were 6 of us, we could make up a minibus ourselves and leave right away for the same price. So we did. There were a French/British couple, two British university students who had been volunteering in Vietnam, and S. and me.
We loaded into a nice plush minibus and headed the ten minutes to the border, which at Ha Tien is a large airy cement building with a luggage scanner inside, located on a paved road, and on the Cambodia side is two tiny buildings that you cannot enter with a wooden barrier across the dirt road. (The pavement disappears half-way between the two border posts.) Then we piled into a far less plush minibus (springs sticking up irregularly in the seats made for a veery long 5.5 hour drive to Phnom Penh) and started merrily off down the dirt road, under a clear blue sky, through the perfectly flat brilliant green rice fields. The occasional wooded hill rose at random in the distance.
After an hour or so, the bus stopped to pick someone up. We had paid for a bus to ourselves, but we said nothing, out of politeness and because you never know when someone's brother/sister/cousin/friend/mother/friend-of-a-friend/aunt/nephew/wife/in-law needs a ride. After a while, we picked up another person, and then another, and another, and pretty soon it was clear that 1. we were not getting the bus to ourselves, and 2. most of the original tourist-type people were somewhat cranky about this, as their comfortable sprawled-out space shrunk. I watched what the incoming passengers were paying ($4-ish, less as we got closer to Phnom Penh), and realized that, very possibly, the tourist agency in Vietnam had ripped us off.
The minibus continued to fill. The row facing backwards behind the driver filled up, and we rearranged our legs every-other, trying not to look directly at one another, since it is extremely awkward to stare at a person you do not know when their face is so close to your own and your legs are touching all the way along. Newcomers slid their bags of rice under the seat and one of the two women squished into the passenger seat held a baby. The tourists got crankier. The ride got longer every time we stopped. I got whiplash from the pothole and nearly whimpered at the pain of it, exacerbated by every following pothole. I didn't dare go back to sleep, but I was too tired to stay awake, after getting up at 5 am yet again. (Note: waking up before it was light: another theme of the trip.)
At long last, we got to Phnom Penh and started dropping people off. When everyone was gone but the tourists, we pulled into a petrol station and the driver said, "Here you are."
"Uh... where are we?" we asked. We hadn't the first idea. We had been told in Vietnam that the bus would take us right where we needed to go.
Or, it appeared, not.
"Just out of curiosity," the driver said, (except not quite in perfect English like this; I am taking liberties), "how much did you pay them for this trip?"
Of our $15 each, apparently $10 each got eaten in the 10 minute trip to the Vietnam border and the guy walking us across the border doing nothing, when we had visas and could have managed just fine alone. The driver on the Cambodia side, who drove us 5.5 hours to Phnom Penh, which seems like the biggest task, certainly requiring the most fuel, got $5 for each of us.
And he didn't know Phnom Penh at all, which makes sense because his route is border-city, not within city. We hauled out two different guidebooks for their maps, on neither of which we could find ourselves because we were not yet in the actual city, and after figuring out that we were on a main street that did, further into town, appear on a map (dear Cambodia: thank you, thank you, thank you, for putting the street signs in English letters as well as Khmer), I directed him to the street-o'-tourists using the Rough Guide map (never trust a Lonely Planet map; they are awful). Unfortunately, I did not know how tiny and narrow this street was, so we ended up stuck down it, causing a horrible traffic jam and din of horns and leaving the poor driver to somehow maneuver his minibus out of a barely-one-lane alley.
S. and I tipped him because we felt so bad that he had been forced to drive us all the way to our hotel without being paid adequately by the tourist agency, but I doubt it was enough to make up for his trouble.
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