Phnom Penh to Siem Reap (6 hours)

We got up today at 5:30 so we could catch a 6:15 bus to Siem Reap. We were traveling almost the entire stretch and Cambodia so it was going to be a long morning. I've made it a habit not to eat at least 12 hours before a long bus ride, but even so, I wasn't hungry. We, still reluctantly, put our packs in the bottom storage and got on the bus. We only waited 5 minutes, which is nothing compared to that crazy Indonesian minibus.

The bus was equipped with a sub-zero AC, which eventually everyone turned off, and a TV/DVD so about a half hour into the ride, the Cambodian karaoke DVDs came on. Honestly, despite being very strange, they were quite catchy. After about 2 hours of karaoke videos, we made a pit stop for about 15 minutes. Then the weirdest movie I'd ever seen came on. It started off with Guy Pierce (I think) in a courtroom with a Chinese guy dressed up in a Kung Fu outfit. The Chinese guy was doing some experiment and brought back another Chinese guy back to life, but as a zombie vampire who hopped around. In the next scene, the 2 Chinese guys parachutes into an Andricam tribal village somewhere in the serengetti. The rest of the movie was him fightig off every African animal imaginable ad tryingto become chief of the tribe via his zombia.

After the next pit stop, I just started looking out the window at Cambodia. The inside of the bus was comfortable, the road wasn't too bumpy, and I was tired of Cambodian entertainment. Where Malaysia has its jungle and Indonesia has its trash, Cambodia had a very strong agrarian feel to it. There were fields everywhere and from *KLANK!!!*

... either we ran over something metal, or something fell off the bus. Either way, the bus slowed down and eventually stopped. Most of us got off and watched as the driver tried to fix the problem ... in the blazing hot heat. About an hour later, another bus pulled up and everone got on that one. The driver apologized to us, but neither Josie nor I felt any irritation because Cambodia has been great so far. We moved our packs to the new bus, got on, and took off. As we were driving along, I noticed that not everyone had gotten on ... and we were stuck in a pretty remote place about an hour outside the city. The new bus wasn't as smooth of a ride and there was no TV, but the music was Cambodian pop, which I think I might go out and look for.

We got to Siem Reap at around 2:00, only a half hour behind schedule. We soon got our bus tickets to Bangkok and found a driver to take us around Angkor Wat tomorrow.