A further post is required today, to detail the trials of yesterday's journey. Until now, Bruno and I have been humourously joking that our journeys always seem to go with uncanny ease, and that the bad luck must all be waiting for us somewhere along the road. Ha ha we went. Ha ha ha.
Yesterday we were up at six to get a bus back to Phnom Penh. I should have known things were looking bad when I poured milk into my tea and it instantly curdled, because the waitress had already put lemon in it. If you can't start the day with a cup of tea, it's not looking good.
No sooner had we got on the bus, when the driver started the Karaoke video. This was played on loop for the remainder of the journey. Apparently, he also thought that this more than compensated for the cost of our ticket, and so turned off the air conditioning. My attempts at a protest only angered him, and instead of the air conditioning, he turned up the volume on the Karaoke.
To further let out his rage, he then ran over a dog.
Minutes later he also managed to hit a moped. Fortunately, this is not an event of great import in Cambodia, and with a few good natured gestures of abuse, both moped driver and (I fear injured) passenger were on their way.
Which is when one of the tyres burst. We then had to wait at the driver's mate's moped garage while both men puzzled over the fact that none of the vast array of moped tyres would fit on the bus. We had a choice of waiting in the midday sun, the increasingly oven-like bus, or the garage itself. I chose the garage, until one of the machanics started cooling himself down by flapping his shirt up and down over his beer belly. In a flirtatious way.
When we finally arrived in Phnom Penh after more than ten hours, I was promptly bitten by a (possibly) rabied dog.
We spent yesterday evening at a Cambodian hospital, trying to track down the Rabies vaccine which my Doctor had assured me I would not need. The hospital was actually not badly equipped, lacking only curtains to stop you seeing all the patients being treated, and the Rabies Vaccine.
Now, instead of heading towards the white sands and crystal waters of Phu Quoc Island, we are on our way to Saigon, where I can 'hopefully' start a series of painful and probably unnecessary injections! Hooray!
