Getting to Sen Menorum

Sunday, February 21, 2010

I know I've been writing too much about my time on buses/the road. I'm sure you are getting tired of the same stories of buses breaking down, and frankly, I am a little too. Unfortunately, these are the stories that are the clearest to me when I find the time to write in my journal. There are many smaller stories that I plan to record and then forget, but I'm going to start making more of an effort to take notes in my journal to remember these stories and try to take a break from the bus stories. If the bus journeys stop being so eventful I'll have less bus material to write about! Cross your fingers ;) For now, one more...

----------
I stare across the road at the bus that will take me the first half of the way to Sen Menorum. It looks sturdy. Or at least its clean. I stare more aggressively, as though in a contest with it. My message should be obvious, “Don’t even think about breaking down until after you drop me off. Not even a flat-tire from you. Do I make myself clear, Bus?”

The bus will leave around 7am and I was told I will arrive around 2:30pm in Sen Menorum. My plan with Liz and Jen is dinner at 7pm. I want to arrive early and be relaxed. And I don’t want to find myself stuck on the road again, not now. It’s a sign of my stress and excitement that I am negotiating with my bus across the street as I have my breakfast.

We leave on time and an hour later we are in Snoul. The bus stops at its designated stop/restaurant and everyone gets off. It will soon continue to Phnom Phen and I will wait for my bus to SM. I ask what time my bus will come. “1pm.” One!?! They tell me I will arrive in SM at 4:30pm. Yeah right, I think. If the bus is suppose to come at 1 it won’t leave till after 2. And now I have to wait nearly 5 hours here?

I saw we passed a market in town with a lot of shared vans on our way here. Screw this. I’m taking my own transport. I don’t care about the $6 I lose from the bus ticket. I grab my bag and walk into town. I find a shared van that will leave at 11am for SM, $5. I’m not sure why, but I trust a van more to get me there than a bus. Particularly because the bus is from the same company that failed to get us to Kratie.

At 11am we are actually on the road! I’m squeezed between two women. One is a particularly wide woman by Cambodian standards. Her weight shoves me into the smaller, bony woman next to me. For the entire ride they speak loudly across me, constantly throwing their arms across me to emphasize their statements that I don’t understand. There is so little regard for personal space (at least within the same gender) that I wonder why we are so protective of our personal space at home. While I would greatly prefer that their conversation not fall across my lap, I appreciate that they are so comfortable with resting a hand on the others leg or taking my hand to get my attention. If I touched a woman on the bus in Seattle to get her attention… well I just wouldn’t.

The road to SM clearly used to be horrible. Now it’s in the progress of being paved. It winds up and down into the mountains of far Eastern Cambodia. If I continued directly east for another 150km or so I would pass through Vietnam and reach the Pacific Ocean. Looking at my map, it amazes me that I would only have to go slightly north to find myself in Mui Ne, where I started just a month ago. It’s only been a month since I left dad in Mui Ne?

Every time the van slows down I tense up. Don’t stop, don’t stop, please don’t stop… I hold my breath and we start to accelerate again. I’m growing slowly more confident that the van will make it without any serious stops, it sounds fine, the AC works, it seems in good shape. Then again there are 18 people in this mini-van, 4 ducks under the 2nd row of seats, 2 piglets in the back, and a lot of boxes and baskets on the roof. With each pothole or rock we drive over I wait to hear the sounds of a flat tire, but they don’t come. Sooner than I thought possible we are in Sen Menorum. I get off at the eco-tourism office in town called “Middle of Somewhere,” which is mentioned in my LP. Yes, I am in the middle of somewhere, I made it! It’s 2pm, I have 5 hours to relax and read, eat, find a guesthouse and the restaurant for tonight.