TRAVELMAN in CAMBODIA: The Road to Phnom Penh

I rode the Superdong from Phu Quoc to the border town of Ha Tien, then crossed into Cambodia. By the way, I’ll be incorporating the ferry name “Superdong” into this post as much humanly possible.

The ride on the Superdong was included in the $22 price of the trip from Phu Quoc to Phnom Penh. My first mini-van of the trip picked me up at 0700 AM, to take me to the Superdong. As usual, it was about ten minutes late. This gave me time to check out and say goodbye to Clemons and Pablo. They were hailing an early cab to the airport for their return to Berlin.

The mini-van dropped me and the other travelers at the harbor on the other side of the island. My seat on the Superdong was on a second floor lounge. It wasn’t bad. We sat on a vinyl, wraparound couch. It wasn’t crowded so I was able to lie down and grab a nap, on the SuperDong.

When the SuperDong arrived at the Ha Tien harbor two hours later, none of us knew where to go when we walked onto the docks. I’d met three women on my mini-van who were also headed to Phnom Penh, we decided to walk toward the street to look for the bus that should be waiting for us. At the moment we decided this, a Vietnamese woman approached and asked, “Excuse me sir, where you go?”

I wasn’t sure if she was trying scam me into paying for an unnecessary ride somewhere, but I answered anyway. “Phnom Penh.”

“You one person, you go Phnom Penh, come this way.” I followed her. She seemed to know something I didn’t. Sure enough she led me to a guy holding a sign with three names on it. One of those names was mine (Granted, a few of the letters were wrong, but close enough). The woman and the sign guy escorted me to a mini-van. The man, the woman, and another man, finished collecting the passengers and we were on our way.

We had a stop at a bus station where two people got out. the woman who had found me at the docks walked them to their bus. She came back and we were off to Phnom Penh!

...Not quite.

First we went back the way we came and into town. We stopped at a travel agency/restaurant and were told that we would leave for Kampot at 0100 PM. My journey would be to Kampot and then on to Phnom Penh. They said I would arrive at 6:30 PM. I didn’t believe them.

—behind the counter of the Mekong Travel travel agency—-

It was only 9:45 AM so I had a couple hours to explore Ha Tien. The travel agency was professional and a great help. I’d read online that I would have to sit at the border for two hours while my Cambodian visa was processed. The travel agency offered to process the visa for me by 1:00 PM when we were to leave for the border. If I did it at the border it would be $35. If they did it was $38 and everything would be done before I was even at the border.

I took this deal. I was also able to pay with my leftover VND, so I didn’t have to deplete the dollars I’d bought the previous day. I left my passport with them and went off to explore Ha Tien.

I came across a large open square that double as a very wide Main Street. Children had recently been let out of school. They rode their bikes and ran around the square. If they saw me, they waved enthusiastically and said Hello. Many of the children bought after school snacks at the food carts.

—Superdong!!—

1:00 PM rolled around and we went off to the border in a Mini-Van. When we arrived at the border the mini-van pulled to the side of the road. The Travel agent woman who had been leading us around showed up on her motorbike. She instructed us to walk the 150 meters straight ahead and go through immigration.

I thought that would be the last I’d see of the travel agency. I was bit worried about finding my way. So was the older Russian couple who had also been on my mini-van. The wife spoke minimal English and the husband spoke none. They stuck close to me.

As I approached the first checkpoint, the travel agent woman arrived again on her motorscooter and said something to the guard. He let us through. We then had to walk another twenty meters to another checkpoint window. The travel agent lady showed up on her scooter again, collected our passports, showed them to the border agent briefly, gave us the passports back, and instructed us to walk on the quarter kilometer into Cambodia.

Again, I thought that was surely the last I’d see of motorbiking travel agent lady.

The Russians followed me into the Cambodian immigration building. The border felt a bit porous, to put it lightly. It felt like they had the attitude of “If you want to come in here, that’s fine with us. We don’t know why you want to do that, but whatever.”

There was one counter for departure with one man behind it and one for arrival with another man behind it. A group of about twenty travelers sat, waiting to be processed. The women I’d met on the first mini-van of the day were there.

—looking back and saying goodbye to Vietnam—

Another guy, not in uniform, stood next to the arrival guy. The uniformed guy inspected and stamped a stack of passports that the non-uniform guy collected after they were stamped. Once they were all stamped, he took the stack into a room that had the word Quarantine above it. I remembered that there was an extra dollar fee at the travel agency for “quarantine.”

I handed the stamper guy my passport. He looked at it for three seconds and said something to the affect of “you’re good.” He pointed for me to go back outside and continue onward. The Russians followed me. I was glad I had a different travel agent, otherwise I would have been sitting with those women waiting to be processed. I’d also ran into them in Ha Tien and discovered that they were leaving for the border at 12:00 instead of my 1:00PM departure. That meant they’d been sitting there for over an hour.

The Russian couple and I walked to the last checkpoint, the guard looked at our passports for three seconds and waved us through. We walked on and saw three waiting mini-vans. One of the drivers directed us to the correct mini-van. A moment later the motorbiking lady travel agent showed up on her motorbike to make sure we were in the right place. Her methods reminded me of the modern day cowboys that ride dirt bikes around cattle to herd them, I was the cattle.

We sat and waited for about thirty minutes for the rest of the van passengers to get through immigration. I took pictures of the numerous casinos. Apparently gambling is legal in Cambodia but not Vietnam.

Finally we were off. It was a scenic ride to Kampot. I took many pictures, but few of them came out. I held my iPad mini up to the open window and snapped photos as we sped down the road at 85 km an hour. Cambodia had even less traffic laws than the rest of Asia. I don’t think they have lanes.

At one point in the trip we almost ran over two people on a motorbike. They’d decided to cross the road without looking. Our driver had to slam on his brakes. I’m amazed I don’t see more accidents.

—an overturned truck in the upper left of pic—

We arrived in Kampot safely and had an hour wait until the next mini-van. I walked into a bookstore across the street to buy a coca-cola. The bookstore was called the Bookish Bazaar. A husband and wife came downstairs with their three year old child. They were European, maybe German.

I talked to the wife, who sold me the coke. They’d wanted to settle down in Kampot and open a bookstore. They got here but couldn’t bring any books, so they opened a homestay. Then they began collecting books and opened the bookstore. I wanted to ask them why it was their dream to live in Kampot but I couldn’t think of a way to ask without sounding rude (like, “Why would you want to live here?”) Stop in there, they were nice and had a great bookstore.

While I was waiting for the mini-van, I got a message from Aimee, who I’d met in Thailand way back in September. She and her friend were going to be going to Phu Quoc and she wanted some inside info. It turned out that we’d be crossing paths in Phnom Penh so we made plans to meet up and go to the killing fields together. It was so cool to hear from her and to have it coincidentally be on the exact day that we’d be crossing paths.

The new mini-van arrived, and we backtracked for an hour back the way we’d come before turning toward Phnom Penh. I don’t know why we had to do this, and I don’t know why we had the people going to Phnom Penh had to accompany the people going to Kampot, but that’s S.E. Asia (and flights in America are crazy in a similar way, so what are you gonna do?).

We arrived in Phnom Penh around 7:30. Luckily my hostel was a five minute walk. First impressions of Cambodia: dusty, hot, the food is the most expensive in all My S.E. Asia travels.

!steemitworldmap 11.5731 lat 104.9283 long Crossing the border from Phu Quoc into Cambodia and onto Phnom Penh, Cambodia d3scr