The train to Bangkok and changing up plans

Before I lived with Craig, I had always been the most nitpicky of all the roommates I ever had (they number over a dozen). I’m still more particular about hygiene (especially of the bathroom variety), but Craig surpasses me in all other areas of tidiness, organization, and planning.

During this trip, if we didn’t have at least a few weeks planned ahead, he would start to get very antsy. Part of this is because he knows and loves me and gets worried about my mental wellbeing if we end up in a not-so-great lodging situation, but in these instances he is usually not a happy camper, either. So for us, it’s better to book ahead with the hope that we can avoid having to settle for disappointing Airbnbs or crappy hotels.

Still, while in Siem Reap, a mere five days before our projected border crossing into Thailand, we went against type and completely changed all of our plans.

The moat around Angkor Wat on a hot scooter ride.

It all started with the bus to Siem Reap, when I was still feeling the effects of the viral illness I contracted while in Battambang. When we boarded, one of the attendants warned us that because there were only four passengers on a bus designed for five times that many, the A/C wouldn’t be turned on all the way. Craig insists he didn’t feel like the ride was that hot, but I was a sweaty, overheated mess by the time we arrived in Siem Reap. The dusty remorque (like a tuktuk but different) ride through the blazing midday sun to our Airbnb didn’t help and I felt a little bit like death warmed over (or death heated up?) by the time I collapsed in an exhausted heap in our Airbnb, in our mosquito-filled home for the next five days.

Since I hadn’t fared much better on the non-air-conditioned train ride from Phnom Penh to Battambang a few days previous, Craig was understandably worried about the projected travel plans to Bangkok, about 245 miles away. We both prefer train travel to bus travel, and after doing some research, Craig had decided to take a train from Aranyaprathet, just across the border into Thailand, to Bangkok. We would have to take a bus from Siem Reap to the border first, though, which was about a three-hour ride. Then, after the border crossing, which could take a good amount of time, the non-air-conditioned train would be another five hours. So Craig anxiously suggested that perhaps I should fly from Siem Reap to Bangkok instead.

Remorque ride.

“Hmm, but I don’t like to be separated from you for too long, and the flights are expensive,” I said. (For reference, the train from Aranyaprathet to Bangkok would cost only $1.50 USD per person and a one-way flight was $125 USD.)

“We’d have to take an early bus to get to the border, and then we need to give ourselves enough time for the crossing, and then the train doesn’t leave until 2:00pm, so we wouldn’t get into Bangkok until after 7:00pm,” Craig fretted. All of this in over 90F heat and tropical humidity.

“Oof.” It was hard for me to even think about such a journey, having finally started to feel somewhat better physically. We both began looking at flights and contemplating ways and means, like taking a bus all the way to Bangkok (which is how most people make the journey).

“Hmm, hang on,” Craig said after a little bit. “There’s also a train at 7:00am. What if we took the bus to the border and then stayed in Aranyaprathet overnight and took the train the next morning? It would be much cooler at 7:00am than at 2:00pm.”

Since we were able to cancel our last night in Siem Reap without any consequences, Craig found a highly-rated hotel in Aranyaprathet to stay in for our border crossing. After so many land crossings in trains and buses, we are both familiar with the utter shittiness of border towns and their lodgings, but hopefully Booking.com wouldn’t steer us wrong this time.

Accordingly, on our day of departure, we arrived to the bus company office in Siem Reap thirty minutes before departure. The sun was already blazing and I had a dangerously-close-to-sweaty walk to the 7-Eleven three blocks away for a cold drink. The office slowly began to fill up with westerners (and one Korean guy!–I looked over his shoulder while he was on his phone to see what language it was in), all headed the full distance to Bangkok. When it was time to depart, we walked across the roundabout intersection to where the minibus waited and climbed in.

It was a fairly uneventful but at least air-conditioned ride to the border. The guy we think was Argentine sat to my left (he had a tattoo of a maté gourd on his thigh) and Craig sat to my right. I knit for a bit while I listened to my audiobook and Craig stared out the window. We were the oldest passengers aside from a guy in his 60s who seemed to speak both Italian and Russian and who got scolded loudly by an English girl for watching soccer videos on speaker (why people don’t wear headphones in public spaces is truly beyond me). The strangest thing was that the driver sat on the right side of the minibus, which made his frequent attempts at passing slower vehicles in front somewhat dangerous since he had to veer quite far into oncoming traffic in order to see.

Other than that, we made it to the border in good time which is where we also discovered why the driver sat on the right side of the car; everyone drives on the left here in Thailand! “This will be good practice for Australia,” I remarked.

Craig and I disembarked to the possible wonderment of the other passengers, who we met again going through passport control. They seemed to look at us and think, “What the heck are they doing stopping here in this shitty border town?” Little did they know it was all part of our master plan to not have yet another life-crushing travel day.

By the time we were processed through immigration in both countries, we had sweated through our clothes.

“Ugh, it’s hot!” I said, pointing out the very obvious.

“Imagine waiting for an hour and then getting on the train!” Craig said cheerfully. We tried to exchange money at a bank, but found they would only exchange USD. It was blissfully cool inside, however; the air-conditioning felt as if it was cleaning my soul.

“Do you want to wait in here while I go exchange money and maybe get a SIM card?” Craig asked me.

“Yes. Yes, I do,” I replied as I thought to myself, “Never let this man go.”

Once these tasks had been accomplished, we found ourselves a tuktuk and Craig showed him the hotel on Google Maps, a 9-minute drive away.

“Can you take us there? How much is it?”

“Yes,” the driver said. “150 baht.” (35 baht = 1 USD.)

“Ooh, 150, that’s kind of expensive,” Craig said before pausing significantly. “How about 100?”

“100?” The driver laughed and said immediately, “Yeah, sure!”

Sometimes, bargaining in Asia is really easy. Most of the time, it’s fun and good-natured. This time, it was both!

We checked into the Velo Hotel, which had a BMX pumptrack in front of it with some bigger ramps off to the side. In the searing heat, it seemed ridiculous that anybody would ever want to use it, but Craig was confident we would see bikers there later at night (he was right). The hotel was, besides the strange cycling decor, very nice indeed (thanks for not screwing us over, Booking.com!) and we quickly killed the two mosquitoes in the room upon entering. We are mosquito-killing masters at this point.

Velo Hotel pumptrack.

While Craig again went out to do some reconnaissance on the train station and get a couple of things from the 7-Eleven (I love Asian convenience stores), I lounged around and recouped my strength. Actually, the travel hadn’t felt too bad! And the hotel room was really comfortable! We decided to take it easy and just eat dinner at the hotel restaurant downstairs. At this point in our travel, we were opting for “easiest” instead of trying to find the “tastiest.”

After staring at the menu, which listed items in Thai with helpful English descriptions like “Stirfry noodles with chicken/pork/seafood” or “Noodles in gravy with chicken/pork/seafood,” I pointed to the former and asked, “How do you say this in Thai?”

“Pad see ew,” the waitress answered. Aha! Why the English description doesn’t actually have the romanization/pronunciation of how to say the dishes in Thai, and why Google Translate doesn’t give the romanization when you use the photo function, is really just too bad since we actually know quite a lot of names of dishes in Thai.

We finished ordering and I sprayed some Deet on while we waited for the food to arrive (mosquitoes are inescapable). When Craig’s chicken with basil was set down before him, heaped high with peppers, he said, “Oh shit, I forgot to ask for no spicy.” Somehow, we got through dinner by trading a good portion of our meals (you see, I love Craig in return and will give up my coveted pad see ew so that he won’t die an ignominious death by chili pepper).

The next morning, we picked up our cute bento breakfast boxes from the front desk and walked in the already hot dawn to the train station. It slowly began to fill with passengers, all locals. When the train arrived, I tried to rush on but was stymied by a plant and exiting passengers, so the best booth we could find was right next to the on-board bathroom. This wasn’t too bad at first, but by 10:00am, the stale urine smell whenever the train stopped was growing stronger and the heat was beginning to affect me (the toilets on the Battambang train and the Bangkok train were like those in Bulgaria–you could see the tracks passing below through the hole in the bowl). At this point, I had started to feel sweat sliding between my boobs and down my back and everything was just so overwhelmingly hot and sticky. The train was also getting more crowded the closer we got to Bangkok and we no longer had our small booth to ourselves. Finally, five hours after our departure, we finally arrived in the center of Bangkok and I staggered out onto the platform, a dried husk of a human, somehow both withered and dripping at the same time.

Disembarking the train in Bangkok.

We climbed up to the BTS, Bangkok’s skytrain system, and boarded less than a minute later. When the doors whooshed open and I stepped inside, I nearly wept. Heavenly, heavenly air-conditioning. What did people do before air-conditioning? How did anybody survive?

The ride was short; too short for my sweaty shirt and pants to dry, and then we were back out into the hot sun, making our way on foot to our Airbnb, 0.4 miles away. The walk went fast, probably because the city streets were filled with things and people to look at; dozens of carts selling all kinds of goodies were catering to the lunch rush and the hustle and bustle was somehow comforting. Surprisingly, miraculously, we were able to check in to our Airbnb right away even though we were 2.5 hours early. We must have done something good in our past lives. There were only two mosquitoes that needed to be vanquished when we entered our comfortable apartment, and after cranking up the A/C and taking lukewarm showers, we both felt practically human again.

It was another easy decision to go across the street for lunch and I had success yet again when I tried to order by just saying the name of a dish (this time woon sen). The lychee frappe was cool and delicious and Craig’s chicken was not spicy, so we were both rejuvenated by the time we finished eating.

“It was a tough train ride, but there’s something about being in a big city that gives me more energy than when we arrived in Battambang or Siem Reap,” I told Craig. Those are the third and second-largest cities in Cambodia, by the way. “I think I just really like big cities.” I remembered feeling a similar way when our train blew into Saigon. Big cities (actually big, not just big for Cambodia) are really interesting to me and I think they feel safe, perhaps because I know they have everything I need? I can’t say for sure if splitting up the travel into two days made it easier or not, but since we arrived with relatively few problems, I definitely don’t regret the change in plans.

View of the big city from our Airbnb balcony.

The trip to the grocery store after lunch kind of took it out of me, but the stop at the 7-Eleven on the way back was funny. Craig tried to buy two cans of beer, but apparently, alcohol is only sold between 11:00am-2:00pm and 5:00pm to midnight. Ah well, another excuse to go to the 7-Eleven again later.

It’s a little bit funny to think that in five days, we’ll be headed out of Asia (to Sydney and Melbourne for a few weeks before going back to the US). It’s been getting progressively hotter the further west we’ve traveled, which I’ve come to realize is really taxing on me, even though genetically, I should be able to handle it better, my ancestors being from southern China and all.

Getting food in this big city seems extremely easy and everything looks a lot more appetizing than it did in Cambodia for some reason. We’re excited to get out and about and enjoy our last days in Asia. I’m not sure when we’ll be back, but despite the heat and discomfort that we’ve experienced at times here, it’s been an enjoyable and delicious sojourn.

On the train, before I sweated my life essence away.

Struggling with the heat

I read somewhere, perhaps in a guide book, that it takes about two weeks to get used to the heat. I wonder, where did this information come from? Is it some kind of physiological fact that the body needs this much time to adjust? Or is it just some anecdotal statement.. After being in continuously hot climates for almost three weeks now, I call BS. We are not more used to the weather, in fact, it seems to be effecting us more. We think, perhaps it is the first two weeks that are the best because the body hasn’t fatigued yet!

Dusty streets of Battambang

When we arrived in Battambang the heat was cranked up a notch, with daytime temperatures reaching nearly 100, and nighttime lows hovering around 75. The town, the third largest in Cambodia, seemed cute, with a neat grid of streets extending from the river, full of interesting architecture, but the heat meant that we cowered in our hotel for most of the day, not willing to risk our sanity on the dusty streets. We would shake our heads in wonder at the tourists taking a remorque out to the bamboo railroad or the killing fields in the mid-day sun. Unfortunately, Sheena came down with a cold, and therefore suffered the unholy trinity of travel, heat, and body fatigue during our visit, leaving me to wander the unpaved streets alone in the relatively cooler mornings after breakfast.

Making Cambodian food

On our second day I used this time to participate in a cooking class at a nearby restaurant. Since the city was recently awarded recognition from UNESCO for food culture, and since we continued to have a difficult time finding food that we wanted to eat, this seemed like a good opportunity. Of course, the 50,000 riel ($12.50 USD) price tag for the class also went a long ways to convincing me. I joined a young American couple and a French mother and daughter on the market tour, where we bought a few ingredients that we would need, like freshly pressed coconut milk and rice paper wrappers. Back at the restaurant the chef led us through the creation of fried spring rolls, a fish curry called amok, and a beef stir fry called lok lak; he humorously repeated the instructions over and over, in English and French, berating us for not using the entire piece of vegetable or for not cutting fast enough. We chatted amiably until the cooking started, and then we noticed the sweat dripping down our butts and wished we could escape to air-conditioning. Each dish turned out to be delicious, and the simple dessert (a banana, tapioca, and coconut milk pudding) put it over the top. I brought spring rolls home to Sheena, asking her if she felt like eating, or if she had killed any more mosquitos in our room.

Battambang central market

We had met a Cambodian gal at a bar overlooking the Russian Market in Phnom Penh and she was enthusiastic about us visiting Battambang; “the real Cambodia,” she gushed. I had had this thought as well, reasoning that the forces of capitalism and tourism had probably warped the other two places we would visit (Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, respectively), and that something different might be found in Battambang. But we never really adjusted to be able to enjoy or analyze those differences. It was certainly a more quaint, slower-paced place, giving me a feeling similar to when we visited Concepcion, Bolivia, and perhaps without so much heat I would have found reasons to like it. But is Battambang without heat still Battambang?

Watering the bus

With Sheena still feeling low we made our way to Siem Reap on a mini bus. When we stopped for a bathroom break the bus driver watered down the vehicle to keep it from getting too hot, and Sheena watered down her face and bought a cold drink. We encountered a group of motorcyclists, not unlike the ones we had seen in Baja, with their metal attachment cases covered in stickers from different routes completed; I marveled at their bikes, not quite believing that they were traveling long distances in this heat. One of the group noticed me looking and told me that they were Malaysian, that they had come from Malaysia overland, and that it had taken them 5 days to get here. “Not too bad,” he said.

Dusk in Siem Reap

Our stay in Siem Reap has not been too different from Battambang. Our accommodation was filled with mosquitos when we arrived, and it has been an endless battle to reduce the number to something reasonable (“It’s mosquito season,” we’re told); we have found that saying something about the mosquitos to the host is the best policy, as this usually results in weapons being provided for the fight. This time we received an electric zapper in the shape of a tennis racquet, a tool that we became familiar with in Santa Marta, Colombia years ago, and something that makes the job a little bit easier. Sheena has slowly been recovering and her interest has started to return, although she has been more than happy to let me spend mornings wandering around the ruins of the Angkor Archeological Park without her as she gathers her strength.

Our trusty Pople scooter

Many people suggested that renting a bicycle would be a great way to explore the Park, since it is quite large, but also very flat. Before arriving in Cambodia this sounded appealing, but with the heat and the distances that must be traveled, not to mention the lack of bicycle lanes, I opted for an electric scooter instead, available for the low price of $10 per day. One of my joys has been to head out in the early morning on the powerful and quiet scooter, letting the breeze cool me as I head for uncrowded sites around the periphery of the complex. In the evenings the scooter allows us to quickly get into the center of town to find food among the hordes of tourists, and then zip back to our apartment to escape the heat.

Ta Prohm Temple

On our last full day in town Sheena joined me to visit the Park. I had a couple of days to scope things out and I had what I believed to be the perfect plan: we started at Ta Prohm (aka the Tomb Raider temple) when it opened at 7:30am to be among the first few people there. The monkeys, bird calls, and tree roots wrapping around the blocks of stone like alien fingers make this temple extremely atmospheric, and in the early hour it is almost, but not quite, cool enough to enjoy without thinking about the heat. Next we entered Angkor Thom and made a quick detour down a dirt road to visit the East Gate, aka the Gate of the Dead. Besides almost spilling on some sandy terrain en route to the gate, there wasn’t anything particularly spooky about the place and we enjoyed the absence of other people; continuing, bumping along the tree-lined road, we arrived at the Bayon Temple in the middle of the complex. The “million smiling faces” temple is what we have been calling it, and while it was interesting enough, there is something not quite as captivating about it; I had visited on all three days I was in the Park and never found the magic I had hoped was there. Perhaps it was to be found on the third level that was closed for restoration.

Smiling faces

Finally we headed for Angkor Wat. The streams of tuk tuks and remorques going in the opposite direction was a good sign that many tourists had moved on from the most popular site. We arrived via the back entrance to reduce the amount of walking, and quickly made our way up the approach, entering the first level and then climbing to the second level, where we thankfully found the line to the third level–the Bakan Temple–to be short. Removing our hats, we climbed the steep staircase slowly, sweating in the sun as we our pace was moderated by the slower moving, older Europeans ahead of us. On the third level the vastness of the site was visible, and looking out on the perfectly grided site, with its almost too well restored features, we couldn’t help but compare it with our visit to Versailles. Thankfully (for us), the site has yet to recover its pre-pandemic numbers, so the volume of visitors wasn’t anywhere near what we dealt with in France last year.

Looking West from the Bakan Temple

It was only 10am, but somehow we were destroyed, so we mounted the trusty scooter and zipped back home, making stops to pick up food and fully charged batteries along the way, the heat remorselessly baking us whenever we weren’t moving. Our time in Cambodia is just about up, but we don’t expect to find much relief when we cross the border into Thailand, so the struggle will continue a little longer until this Asia leg of the trip comes to a close.

Hotness

The train to Battambang

My alarm goes off and it’s still dark. This is extra unpleasant because we haven’t had to get up this early for quite some time now. I make sure Sheena is awake and then I go eat some breakfast even though I’m not hungry yet. Then we finish packing everything, lock up the room, place the keys back in the lockbox, and book a tuktuk on Grab. It arrives moments after I push the “book” button and soon we are heading down the still dark arterial toward the train station. It is 73-degrees outside and it feels wonderfully cool.

Outside the station

We arrive at the station almost exactly 30 minutes early, as we were directed by the ticketing agent, and we find ourselves among only a handful of other tourists. We briefly sit down on a bench, but then we see a railway worker head down the platform on his scooter, sign under his arm, and we gather our things and start walking toward the furthest train. Sure enough, the man has placed the sign for Battambang in front of the two-car train at the end of the line, just in front of the Sihanouk-bound one, which will leave 20 minutes after us. We climb aboard a train that looks quite similar to one that was on the platform a few days earlier when we bought the tickets, and select a seat on the left side of the cabin, figuring that once the sun rises this will be the shadier side.

The train to Battambang

Sheena pokes her head out the open windows and notes that there are quite a few other passengers heading down the platform, but then it seems that they are all boarding the other train because hardly anyone gets on ours. In fact, when the train pulls out exactly on-time, there are perhaps only 15 people on the train, and only one other couple seem to be tourists. “Weird, I thought people wanted to go to the UNESCO food city?” Sheena says, and I muse about the nature of that designation, whether it’s usually given out based on a widely acknowledged status, or whether it’s more frequently meant to stimulate tourism.. The train seats are hard and the back rests do not recline, and the bathrooms have Bulgarian toilets, but it’s still pleasant because there is a lot of room to kick our feet up and it’s not crowded. As we start on our way out of Phnom Penh, both of us put in our new earplugs because the conductor uses his horn like a Vietnamese bus driver; frequent honks proceed every street crossing and at any other point that he feels someone is too close to the tracks. Since the tracks are lined with vendors, parked vehicles, and back porches of houses, it is quite a racket.

The sun comes up and shortly we find ourselves outside of the city. We briefly pause at the track switch for the Sihanouk line, where an assistant hops out the door and makes sure we continue heading in the correct direction. At this point Sheena asks me to take the window seat and I realize why she has been wearing glasses. The cool air blasts my face and makes my hair fly around; I fish out my own sunglasses and a hair tie, and then a little while later, my fleece. I’m in very high spirits. When we aren’t smelling the crop burning, the morning air is fresh and fragrant, and the scenery is interesting, full of rice fields and cows and water buffalo, howling dogs and waving children, lotus flowers floating on ponds and brightly painted temples and altars. The car sways back and forth, sometimes more than I would like, and the tracks make a classic clickity-clack sound as we roll by.

Sights along the way

We don’t make very many stops, and when we do, they are quite brief. Several people disembark at Sameakki Mean Chey and then some people climb aboard at Kdol and Bamnak. Every time we enter a town the frequency of the horn blasts goes up and this happens again about 20 minutes outside of Pursat. But this time the intensity seems different, and as the conductor lays on the horn and we start to brake with increasing urgency, Sheena and I become more alert to the situation. We look out the window and see a roadway crossing ahead, and at that crossing there is some sort of large cart, coasting, but not stopping as it passes the railroad warning sign, with several men jumping off of it, trying to push it backwards to slow it’s progress. We get closer to it, taking in the detail, noticing the heavy bulk of wooden furniture piled high in the vehicle, and we sense that our train will not stop in time and that the cart will also not stop in time. Shortly after we crash into the front of the vehicle with the sound of wood cracking, and we continue, pushing the cart, for another 2 or 3 meters.

Everything stops and we can’t quite believe what has happened. I stick my head out the window to see the wreck, and then I look behind me and see that Sheena’s head is out the next window. The doors slide open and the train workers jump out to assess what has happened. The passenger sitting across from us also jumps out and coolly walks up the road to take a pee. In a matter of minutes there is quite a crowd on the road. Some of them are waiting to cross the tracks, no doubt, but I get the sense that others just came from nearby when they heard the noise. It’s hard to fathom, because there doesn’t seem to be anything nearby for miles. Eventually the engine of the vehicle is started and a bunch of men help push the vehicle backward, off the tracks and up onto the roadway. We get our first good look at it, which is a strange thing indeed: a long, single-axel trailer that is hitched to another single-axel which has a motor on top of it; steering arms extend some 6 feet from the motor so that a person sitting on the trailer may control the contraption. Perhaps the person steering had no access to breaks.

The crash

Once the vehicle is clear the conductor stops taking photos and starts to berate the driver. His tone is angry and he walks over to the railroad crossing warning sign, pointing repeatedly to the STOP sign and the text sign underneath, which I imagine must say something like “train will not stop” or “look both ways before crossing.” The driver wears an awkward smile and doesn’t say anything. We start up again, appearently no worse for the wear, and pass the vehicle which looks like it sustained damage to one of the front wheels. Before we know it we have arrived in Pursat, where we stop for 20 minutes for food.

Perhaps not learning my lesson from the bus journey to Phnom Penh, I decided that we should plan to get lunch at this stop. Luckily, when we hop down from the train there is a grouping of women with their wears ready for purchase. The first of these has bamboo sticky rice, called kralan, and I look at it and then at the man who is standing next to the vendor, the same man who jumped off the train at the crash to go pee, and I ask, “is it good?” I’m not sure he understands my question, or at least, the only thing that I understand him saying is the word kralan, and then repeating the prices that the woman was telling us (4,000 riel). I look at Sheena and we decide to buy one, and then we move on to the BBQ and fried meats and fish that is piled on several more tables. We pick out a chicken leg and receive rice and vegetables with it (7,000 riel). This feels like a success, especially when we start eating and find both of these dishes to be tasty.

As we work on our food, the man approaches us to chat. He asks the usual starting question, “where are you from?” and from there we learn a bit about him. He’s Cambodian, from a town 20km up the line, a teacher, he used to speak French, and he thinks his English isn’t so good. We beg to differ, and we tell him so. He asks what we are doing here and we use the simple answer, “vacation.” This is interesting because he goes on to tell us that he can’t take vacation, that Cambodia is not a rich country, that he has been saving money for 20 years but that it’s very little; I don’t think he’s trying to make us feel bad, just being matter-of-fact, which is natural when speaking a foreign language. We ponder the appropriate response, thinking that perhaps there isn’t one, until Sheena offers, “we’re lucky.” Which is true. This man also wants to know what we think of Cambodia, specifically if we think it’s expensive or cheap. We start to answer by comparing to Vietnam, which we were surprised to find out was cheaper than Cambodia, and this results in a sour expression on his face. I recall that Cambodia and Vietnam do not have the best relationship politically/historically, and indeed, this man goes on to mention something about the island Phu Quoc, which is called Koh Tral in Khmer, and how it perhaps rightly belongs to Cambodia (quick Google searching makes me think “it’s complicated”). Luckily, our conversation is cut off by the sound of the train engine restarting and we climb aboard. Twenty minutes later we make a brief stop in Beong Khna to let him off and we wave goodbye.

The rest of the ride is more of the same, except hotter. The breeze is no longer fresh and cool, but it is still appreciated because the air temperature is up in the 90’s now. We switch sides of the cabin to avoid the changing sun position and I become a bit more restless, getting up and sitting on my knees on the seat behind Sheena, or stretching out my legs without shoes on. We seem to only honk at cows on the tracks now, passing through fewer towns. But we are making good time and it’s not long before we are getting close to Battambang. I begin to pull down the bags and start to repack things when there is another sudden breaking and a sound of railroad ballast scraping against the side of the train. We come to a stop outside of the station and then we hear a wail, a very pitiful one. I look out the window and see that there is someone under the train, their fishing pole sitting on the pile of ballast next to them. Once again, the employees are thrown into action and the passengers into confusion. We all hang out the windows, listening to this mystery person wail plaintively, legs and arm akimbo. Some additional people are called over from the adjacent buildings and soon a man has been able to help this woman out from under the train. She is older, but how old is probably impossible to tell. I had noticed quite a few people living under tarps by the tracks as we had been approaching and I wonder if she is one of theirs. How did she end up under the train? Did she slip on the ballast as it pulled along side her? Her head and arm are bloodied and we notice them as the train slowly advances the last 100 meters to the train station, at which point we are bombarded by tuktuk drivers.

We grab out bags and walk through the crowd, emerging in the mid-day heat and full sun on the dusty road outside the station. It’s only 2 blocks to our hotel, so we decide to walk and we can’t quite believe what just happened. A bad day for that conductor, we think. Our hotel is fine, acceptable, with functioning air-conditioning, which is a relief.

Welcome to Cambodia

I really enjoyed Ho Chi Minh City. This was something of a surprise because many people warned us about the various negative elements of the city before we arrived, but in hindsight I can see that this was a case of #Wongenbergslikebigcitiesmorethanmost. Even so, we likely owe our enjoyment to our fortuitous lodging selection, which placed us on a small side street in the bustling District 3; this neighborhood–specifically the area to the southwest of Đường Cách Mạng Tháng 8 (August Revolution Street)–differed greatly from more popular tourist areas to the east in that the blocks were cut through by many small alleys, providing greater shade from the mid-day sun and reducing motor vehicle access. This led me to experience HCMC as a dense and complicated place, jam-packed with delicious food. I liked it so much that I checked to see if we could extend our comfortable apartment rental, but alas, other people were in on the secret.

Small streets in District 3

So it was with some sadness that I prepared to leave Vietnam. My two favorite cities (Da Lat being the other) and our most comfortable lodgings were some of the last places we visited, which had the effect of giving me a warmer and fuzzier feeling for the country, despite my travel weariness. When you consider the daunting task of adjusting to a new country on top of this, it’s safe to say that I was feeling a bit nervous about heading to Cambodia. And unfortunately, there are no trains between HCMC and Phnom Penh. When I mapped out our potential route through SE Asia, this was the glaring gap in the network that I brooded over. A flight was possible, but more money than we wanted to spend, so we booked ourselves on the most expensive, best reviewed bus instead. In contrast to many reviews for other bus companies, people noted the frequent bathroom stops, the food that was provided on board, and the friendly and communicative staff; the border crossing process was described as smooth and easy. All of this helped tamp down my travel day anxiety to a minimum, and we arrived at the bus station in relatively high spirits.

Goodbye comfy apartment

This sounds like a set up for a story about a horrible bus story. But it wasn’t horrible. It was just uncomfortable in the mundane, “this is why trains are better” kind of way. The seats were not designed well, which was too bad because we were confined to them for long periods of time. The rest stop food was a disappointment and I cursed my decision not to bring lunch along. And when the bus broke down at the second stop, the roadside rest area didn’t have any air conditioning, so we sat around with the other tourists, passing the time swapping travel stories (like this one) as our butts became increasingly sweaty. The bus pulled in to Phnom Penh nine hours after we departed HCMC, and we reluctantly completed some new country tasks, like getting SIM cards and trying to take out cash from an ATM, all while the sun set. We haggled over the tuk tuk price and wearily headed the 5 km to our apartment, before walking the nearby streets in search of dinner. It was more than 80-degrees out at 8pm.

Our broken bus

We have had several challenges in Cambodia which aren’t unique to this country. For one, we can’t read the alphabet, which is actually a syllabary descended from southern Indian Pallava script from the 5th and 6th centuries. This is somewhat like the problems we had in the Balkans and in China (sans Google), in that we have a difficult time getting Romanized translations of the text. For instance, I know the Romanized names of many Khmer dishes, but when I’m given a menu with all the dishes written in the Khmer language, Google doesn’t give me the Romanization when it translates… “fish noodle fry” isn’t terribly helpful in these situations. I spent an afternoon getting the names of all these dishes in Khmer script on my phone, but I have found this to be less helpful than I thought; the script is so unfamiliar that simply differentiating characters is challenging, like playing a game of word search with an alien language.

New vehicles in Cambodia

Secondly, it took us a little time to figure out the currency situation. Weirdly, Cambodia uses a dual currency system, accepting US Dollar and Cambodian Riel almost everywhere. You can expect to get change in both currencies, meaning that you have to do a lot of math to figure out if the change is correct. Many banks will not give someone using an international card the option to pull out riel at all, which took us some time to overcome. I’m sure this contributes to the prices being a bit more elevated here than in Vietnam. For instance, for someone used to seeing prices in dollars, it doesn’t feel that strange to pay $1.50 for a coffee in one shop and $2.25 in another one, but in riel the difference would be between paying 6,000 and 9,000, which feels like more. It seems intentional that visitors are encouraged to use USD instead of riel, like using CUC in Cuba, as a means of extracting more from them. I guess I can’t really blame anyone for wanting to do that, but we were caught a little unawares.

Coffee with a view

I know it’s early days, and I know it took me some time to figure out Vietnam too, but the fact that it’s more difficult to find food that I want to try, and at the same time more expensive, does make me think we have a lot to overcome here. On top of this, Phnom Penh couldn’t be more different than HCMC; like traveling from Sofia, Bulgaria to Skopje, North Macedonia, I’m left trying to sort out what to make of this place after leaving one that I connected with. The massive, skeletal and unfinished apartment buildings dot the city, like an Asian version of downtown Houston, except that they are future homes rather than places for cars to park; these buildings often sit in the interior of the block, with little-to-no connection with the street, which is just as well because there isn’t much sidewalk (or people walking, for that matter). The slightly more varied mix of traffic, which adds tuk tuks and remorques (carriage pulled by a motorcycle) to the heavy volume of scooters, means that it’s easier to be driven around, but perhaps more challenging to cross the street. Phnom Penh feels both newer and more temporary than HCMC, and I can’t help but wonder what would happen if global capitalism favored it less one day; indeed, it is the “friendliness” of the government toward foreign ownership in the country that has helped it become a hot place to invest in real estate, or an attractive place to relocate as an ex-pat.

Food cart sidecars

Like Skopje, we’re probably staying in Phnom Penh too long, and it sure is a lot of hours to kill in the apartment when the mid-day sun is beating down. But I suppose the odds are that we will improve our knowledge of how things work here, and that we will start to feel more comfortable. We have noticed that the incessant honking of Vietnam has quieted to a reasonable and responsible level of honking here, which is certainly one welcome change. Another positive is that when we leave for our next destination, Battambang, we’ll get to take a train rather than a bus.