After the `long` night of sleep I woke up, since I had to catch a bus. Boy, that was an adventure. I was supposed to be picked up between 7:30 and 8:00 and my van came at exactly 8:10. Everybody kept on telling me it’s ok, so I tried my best to believe them. Besides, I wasn’t the only person in that van. So we arrived to the bus station, better known as `complete mess` and tried to find our bus. We were ordered to sit and so we did. I was a little [ok, not a little, but a lot] excited when I saw that I will have to share a seat with a monk. Unfortunately my excitement vanished completely, once some local was `kind enough` to switch places with the monk. And here I thought I have a perfect opportunity to finally talk to the monk.
We have been waiting for the start of the trip for more than an hour when they started taking some people out of the bus and bringing new ones. And after a little while they ordered everyone to stand up from their seats and change the bus. This is something I have never experienced before. As we were changing bus, I got to watch how just these small but apparently very strong locals were taking scooters off and on the bus and a monk, who was smoking. I was a little surprised, because I had a feeling they are supposed to be living healthy life, which does not include smoking habits. Turns out they are just people after all, with the right to poison themselves with whatever they want.
When entered the second bus I realized that my seat was taken. Ok, so I took someone else’s seat. Still not sure hoe these things are working, but nobody kicked me out. Soon enough the trip started after waiting for longer than 1.5 hours. So face it people – if you book a bus ticket for 8a.m., you are lucky if you leave the bus station at 10 a.m. at least it’s better later than never.
The ride was almost as usual. With several stops for toilets, lunch and so on. The good part of all that – I met an American girl. Well, she is a total mix of different nationalities, and she is a very nice girl and got along immediately. It started innocently enough, just with one or two conversations, while waiting for the bus. Word here, word there and we ended up getting off the bus together, sharing a tuk-tuk to the offered guesthouse and at the very end – sharing a room.
We had to come much earlier to the Phnom Penh, but we ended up there pretty late, so for the first night we decided just to go for a walk, along the river. So we were walking and talking and nodding and it all went so great as if we knew each other for a long time already. When realized that we are hungry, we found an amazing street kitchen with amazing noodle soup [well, honestly, we are still not sure if the soup was so good or we were so hungry]. Two of that fantastic soup and two beers in total cost 3$ for us, which made it even more amazing.
On the way back we found a guy, who appeared out of nowhere, offering us a beer. So we took two beers and sat in front of the King’s picture on the royal palace and made ourselves a picnic. We weren’t the only ones. There were mostly families picnicking around as well. Although it was strange to see them with the blankets on a path and not on the grass. Cambodian way, I suppose.
Since it was already a long day, we had a short night, followed by making plans for tomorrow and finally sleep. It was a good, just a little cold sleep and we both woke up early, so we can make the plan to work the other day.
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