Day 94 - Wed Feb 4 - Siem Reap -> Kampot - Truck Stop Food and Other Adventures

The bus station at 7 am is a good place to see how other tourists are dealing with their 'tout' fatigue. It's early, we're all a bit groggy, and the walk from our shuttle bus to the inter-province bus is crowded with 5 or 6 people holding out the inevitable fresh baguettes and cardboard wheels of Vache Qui Rit cheese. One boy holds his directly in the bus door, blocking a third of the entry as he smiles and says Baguette lady? The girl in front of me, eyes on the stairs, puts out one arm and brushes aside the bread and cheese like a hiker pushing aside a tree branch. She passes, the bread and cheese spring back into place and the boy smiles at me. Baguette lady? We buy two for the road.

The first leg of the trip is as uneventful as is possible in Cambodia. The highway to Phnom Penh, where we catch our second bus to Kampot, is wide enough for two large trucks. The edges are jagged edges, probably washed out during the rainy season, and there's dirt shoulder which nobody rides or drives on unless forced to by a larger vehicle, so the road is shared by cattle, pedestrians, bikes, motorcycles, buses, cars and trucks of all sizes. The larger, faster vehicles are outnumbered by the slower, smaller vehicles - they cut a path through the crowd by honking as much as necessary to get the job done.

The bus stops for a bathroom break near the town of Skuon, which is famous for their deep-fried spiders. Pierre's brother Dre tried them years ago and rates them as "frickin' awesome." We know we need to try them or we'll be kicking ourselves once the trip is done.

Pierre's a pretty adventurous eater and will usually eat just about any meal put in front of him (as long as it's not hydrogenated).  I have definite likes and dislikes, but am usually pretty open to eating stuff. Also, I put my veganism on hold for the duration of this trip - previous experience in Asia taught me that otherwise the theme of our year off would quickly turn into "let's find Dianna something she can eat."  For me, at this point, eating a spider is not that much different for me than the various parts of chickens, pigs and cows we've been served up the past few months.

It's different enough, of course. We stand in front of the plates of spiders for a moment, debating whether to get one or two, and buy one to start (about 30 cents) and nibble on leg.  Insects are a bit like tofu in that they take on the flavour of whatever they're cooked in - otherwise they're pretty flavourless (footnote: Discovery Channel).  Our spider is marinated in a sweet, garlicky, spicy sauce and is crunchy like a well-cooked, hollow (and slighly fuzzy) french fry. All we taste is the marinade.  We get a second one so we don't have to share.  Pierre wolfs his down; I skip the fangs this time round.

The driver gets us to Phnom Penh with a few minutes to spare, so we buy more baguettes and settle in to enjoy the view of the countryside.  We visit with an elderly German man whose been  living and volunteering in Kampot for several years ("They need help, any kind of help - thirty years of isolation and it shows.  It's like Albania was.") .  Later, we plan to listen to our 'iPid' (as we affectionately call it) but the bus has other plans.  

These plans involve a DVD of Cambodian karaoke hits played over the speakers, a honking horn that shrieks as loudly inside the bus as it does outside, plus whatever other noise the bus can muster up.  The driver's chair is the only part of the bus with shock absorbers and they squeak every time we hit a bump, while the rest of the bus clatters like a box of pots and kettles.  The windows jiggle in their frames and every time we hit a big(ger) bump, something thuds beneath our feet like a loose sheet of plywood under the bus has reared up and slammed back down.  Not a trip to bring your noise pollution issues on.  We put the headphones away.

The road from Phnom Penh to Kampot is narrower than the one from Siem Riep, and gets narrower (then unpaved) as we get closer to the coast.  There is no center line and the traffic is dense, keeping our speed down to 40 to 60 km/h.  It's like watching someone else play a video game.  "Better than a rollercoaster," is Pierre's verdict.  He sneaks a few head-lolling moments of sleep in his non-reclining chair.

All the passengers, tourist and Khmer alike, crane their necks to see what the driver is honking at this time.  We watch as the driver muscles his way around a foodcart and livestock truck, then darts back into the right-hand lane at the end of his pass to narrowly avoid an oncoming transport truck who, in turn, is muscling his way past cyclists, cows and a large washout.  The 4 hour trip consists of repeated variations of this maneouver.  

Somehow, we're not nervous except on behalf of the people outside the bus.  Thoughts range from "why so pushy?" to "well-played, driver."  Mostly, I'm grateful that I'm not driving and wish the honking would stop.  I only cringe a few times, especially when we squeak by a couple transporting a door sideways on a scooter.    

I take it back: this is more like watching a busker juggle a kitten and hacksaw.  

Our ears are ringing when we arrive in Kampot and our backpacks are covered in red dust from the road.  We dust ourselves off and pick a quiet restaurant for dinner.  In the back, there's an ad on their bulletin board for a minivan that promises:

              no crazy overtaking

              no loud Khmer music

              no constant beeping of horn

I take a Tylenol and think about it.

photo credits: P