The Road to Cambodia (or why I should take it easy today!)
So yesterday started off well enough, We were swimming in a pool with our lovely english travel companions after a night of Karaoke debauchery. Brant has taken to
the Diving board with some "Mad Skillz" a one-and a half flip... Unprecedented!.
I'm sticking to working on my dive...

- a note here...I have taken very seriously of late to jumping from dangerous heights! It began at the waterfall in Luang Prabang...and continued on to the "Beer Laos Olympics 2005" in Don Det. Beer and Lao Lao does not a Greg Lougainis make! oh hi meghan/Canada 3 you are an inspiration.
TAKE ME TO THE TALISMAN CENTRE...I WANNA GET REAL HIGH. -

...and so at breakfast the londoners broke the news they would not be going to Cambodia with us as was the original plan. This, I think is where our day took a very serious turn for the worst. At the bus Station in Kohrat, after two days of non-stop travel from the 4000 Islands to the middle-class billboard wrought Thailand, we said our goodbyes.

Another 7 hour journey to the Thai-Cam border at Poipet, and I had heard "major leagues"by Pavement one to many times. We met some great Canadian kids on route- a blessing since we had heard that the Cambodian crossing is best to do in numbers. Everything went swimmingly (high-dive pun here) across the border, as the Thai anthem played the sun set and we met the poorest children of our journey thus far.

Then we got on the road to Siem Reap. A supposed 3 hour journey, and to my delight in A white Toyota Camry. No one can fully explain just how horrible a road we got on. I have spent a bit of time on logging roads in Northern B.C. but even they have been maintained once since 1961. Not so in the case of the Cambodian highway. The guide books all write about a bumpy ride, but after twenty minutes of white knuckling the holy-shit handle and the ominous threat of motion sickness affecting Tiffany beside me in the backseat...I began to realize this was not fun.

Then the torrential downpour which turn the black sky into and onslaught of falling drops, and the dirt pothole road into mud. I have never seen so much lightning, period. It continuosly lit the sky for the next hour. Remarks were made about how and what would God throw at us next, crammed in our little Toyota.

2hours later -*POP*-

Now you would think that even in a country that wishes to do nothing with it's heaviest thouroughfare, that the people would be ready to deal with something as little as a blown tire.
No. not really.

We drove on the back tire''s rim to the closest hut and woke up the family of Ten that resided there. The back-up tire of course was also blown, and so we had to go about the task of removing by sheer man-power the tube of one tire, and putting it in the blown one. Our driver, who recieved probably only a portion of the 10-dollars per person fee, was beside himself. As the " proffesional" tire remover got to work of dancing around the rim.
Needless to say after many hours (It was 12:00 am)of dancing, and beating of rims, no tire was removed. We had all settled to sleep on the dirty ground beside The worlds worst highway...and then our driver like a ray of light who had left to Siem reap on a motorcycle came back with a brand new tire.
We set off and bumped along the highway again for another hour and a half, Arriving in Siem Reap at 2:30 am.

As I went to sleep last night, I could here tiffany wretching in the room next to us. I couldn't help but think it a fitting end, and yet I wish her a very speedy recovery, God knows it could have been anyone of us that got the Touristo set in by such a journey.
A credit to all involved...We kept our spirits high throughout, what was easily the worst part of our journey thusfar. Now I sit in Siem Reap, and I am happy to sit in the A.C. looking at a screen and only hope there is a diving platform in the very near future for which to cast off such a bad-case of tire-luck.
HERE WE COME ANGKOR WAT.
SHABBA
- posted by Combine Harvester @ 12:44 AM