Wat's Going On? (warning - this title includes a bad play on words)

I have spent the past few days in Siem Reap, Cambodia, which is home to Angkor Wat.  I have enjoyed it and while Angkor Wat itself wasn't as exciting as I hoped the other temples around it are fantastic. When I get to Australia I will try to add some photos. However, the most interesting story of the past few days came from the bus ride from Bangkok to Siem Reap. First, I should say that we were told it would take approximately 11 hours, so I knew I was going for quite a ride. What I didn't know going into it was the state of the Cambodian infrastructure. I wasn't expecting much (the war just ended in 1999) and our guide assured us that while the roads were bad, they used to be very bad. The roads were bumpy, but what made this story possible is one of the bridges. The back end of a big truck fell through the one lane bridge that represented the only way to get to Siem Reap. At first there were several tourist busses around, however, the other bus companies managed to get trucks/busses to pick up the other passangers more quickly than ours. It quickly became late, past midnight, and we still were sitting in the middle of nowhere. There were a group of Irish women on the bus, one of whom came back and said something about what I thought was baklava.  While it didn't make a lot of sense it had been several hours since dinner so I was up for any discussion about dessert.  Unfortunately, what she had said was that the truck that was stuck in the bridge was being robbed by men in balaclavas.  (Whether or not it was being robbed or just unloaded is still a mystery)  Moving past the initial dissapointment that dessert was not in my future, I remembered that in Nigeria it was common for bandits to blow up the road in order to rob the cars that got stuck.  Regrettably I shared this story which added to a certain feeling of panic that had started to brew.  I also tried to convey that it was one thing to take stuff off a truck and another to rob a bus load of people and that I was sure there was nothing to worry about.  That said I took a few precautions and stashed some cash where few would want to look (don't get any ideas - it was under the sole of my shoe) and then decided there wasn't much else to do.  I politely asked that someone wake me up if we were going to leave or were being robbed.  As it turns out, our bus company managed to get a pick-up at about 1am and we loaded 13 people into the back of it (with bags) and continued bumping down the road to Siem Reap.  17 hours after leaving Bangkok, we finally made it to Siem Reap.  On the way, we got to watch the moon set over the miles of rice patties that make up rural Cambodia and the scene nearly made up for everything else.   

 

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