Asia Trip – Day 7

Sen Monorom – Kompong Cham

Today was the bus ride from hell. Our bus couldn’t make it up any hills and we had a very hilly route to start. The first breakdown occurred about half an hour out of town. Blue smoke everywhere. It was fixed by shoving a piece of cloth into a bolt to seal the leak. The next four stops were all because of hills. We had to get out and walk up the hill, while the driver and his assistants coaxed the bus up the hill. At one point, some of the passengers hitched a lift on a passing truck.
Our driver would never let the rpms get above 2000 (it redlined at 5000) so we’d be at the bottom of a hill just putting along and have no momentum or power to help us make it up the hill. When we finally did arrive (300km in only 10 hrs), my luggage and I were both as filthy as after our ride on the pick-up – my luggage was worse. The only thing that was lacking was the danger as we never got above 40km/h.

At least Shannon and I have some experience with local transport in developing nations and were pretty calm about the whole thing. Some people were really freaking out. Now that I am in Kompong Cham, with a beer in me, sitting on a very nice balcony, writing this, it doesn’t seem like as big a deal as it did 4 hours ago.