Laos Part VI: The Journey Home

After nine days of travel and countless adventures and misadventures, it was time for us to head back to Phnom Penh. Easier said then done. Though we were expecting a long day, we were not expecting it to be as long as it was.

At 8am we were picked up on Don Khone by a wooden longboat, which took us back to the bustling village on the mainland. From there, we were directed to a transport stop rife with about twenty backpackers. We settled in at about 8:15, assuming we were to leave shortly. We didn't. Finally at 9:30 we began to load up two minivans with backpacks and backpackers. The half hour shuttle to the remote Voen Kham border crossing was uneventful. At the Laotian side of the border, we needed to get an exit stamp and pay a $2 "processing fee" (double the usual $1 because it was Sunday). Since my Lao language skills weren't exactly up to snuff, I had no way to refute the charge, but I vowed not to give a penny to the officials on the Cambodian side of the border.

Once we had all gotten our stamp and paid our $2, a process that took no less than thirty minutes, we walked the half kilometer across the border to the Cambodian checkpoint. Since Shanti and I already had our visa we were able to go straight to customs, unlike our traveling companions who all had to get visas. The customs official scoured over my passport, my
Cambodian visa, and all my other visas (for no apparent reason) and then calmly asked for a dollar. "Aht mien loi," I said (I don't have money). He chuckled a bit and let me continue on. Since I was one of the first to go through, everyone after me was able to repeat the same words to avoid paying the unofficial fee. After about forty-five minutes we were all through. But we couldn't leave yet. Not only were we waiting for our transport (the minibuses we took to the border did not cross it), but we waited for a few other backpackers who were coming to the border via a different vehicle; there simply weren't other options for them.

Finally we were off to Stung Treng, presumably the location where we would be split into different transport going to different places (Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Kratie, etc). When we arrived at a restaurant a few kilometers from town, we unloaded all our stuff from the bus and were told that we had an hour for lunch.

Two hours later (it was now 2:30pm), we finally started loading the one bus that was going to take us all to our destinations. The bus - not even full-sized to begin with - was missing half of its seats. I have no idea where they were, but they had simply been removed and replaced with wooden boards stacked three feet high. Luckily, Shanti and I had been pushing the man in charge (Mr. Model of Inefficiency himself) to get things moving for a while and were able to climb onto the bus early and claim real seats. About a half dozen other souls were not so fortunate.

Leaving Stung Treng - which we knew to be at least eight hours from Phnom Penh - a bit after 2:30, we were not happy campers. We made our way south slowly, stopping to drop people off in Kratie and to let all the backpackers get out and smoke. When the driver tried to get them moving, they completely ignored him. Oh, backpackers. As much as fun as it was to listen to their stories about doing drugs and finding themselves, it was not exactly the kind of crowd that Shanti and I wanted to share a confined space with for an extended period of time.

At about 6:00pm we stopped for dinner in Snuol. This was bad for two reasons: 1) it meant that we were taking the roundabout way to Kampong Cham from Stung Treng through Snuol instead of along the Mekong and 2) it meant that we were still at least five hours from Phnom Penh. We had a bit of food and clamored back onto the bus.

Deprived of stops every thirty minutes, our traveling backpacker companions started smoking on the bus. Shanti politely asked them to stop to no avail, even after loud coughing noises. Then, using a tactic known as a "white lie," she informed them that she was asthmatic and that the smoke was bothering her. Did they stop? No. They finished their cigarettes and a half hour later moved to the back of the bus to smoke there.

Shortly before 10:00pm, we dropped a few poor souls in Kampong Cham. They were going to Siem Reap, but would have to wait until the next day to catch a bus there and waste another day traveling as Siem Reap was still five hours away. Onwards we went, finally finally arriving in Phnom Penh at nearly 1:00am. We tried to talk to the bus driver to get him to drop us at (or near) our house to no avail. We caught a tuk-tuk and crashed hard, cursing the inefficiencies of Cambodian transport and the fact that we had to be at work in seven hours. I can safely say we will probably never cross that border again.