If Kerouac Had Driven A Camry

I'll just let you know that we made it fine from Bangkok to the Cambodian border. That was never our concern. Even with the possibility of a state of emergency being instituted after the now-former PM was found guilty for a ruling that we didn't even stay in Thailand long enough to learn about, we were never worried about whether we would get out of Thailand or not. It was a given. What was not a given was getting from Poipet (the Cambodian town at the Thailand-Cambodia border) to Siem Reap (the home of Angkor Wat).

According to David, the road between Poipet and Siem Reap is kept in complete shambles by the man who owns the airport in Siem Reap. The idea is that travellers will be more likely to bypass the road (if we are so nice to even call it that) and instead fly comfortably into the airport with a nice aerial view of the monumental temples below.

Needless to say, we took the low road.

My fears had been growing steadily of this notorious road. I tried to visualize what it would look like. Surely it couldn't be as bad as people make it out to be. Truly, all we had ever heard was simply that it was "bad," which can lead to all sorts of conclusions. Did "bad" mean no signs? Did "bad" mean they were unpaved? Did "bad" mean it would be ineffable pandimonium?

It turned out that "bad" would mean all three, but we didn't know that as we sat sweating - our bags hugged tightly to our chests for fear of the notorious Cambodian border thiefs - under a little tin covered shelter, waiting for our visas to process.

We would hiss at anyone who approached us (an unfortunate side effect of travelling around here is that you assume everyone is scamming you) to help with our bags, help take us to the station, help with visas, etc. Finally, I reluctantly struck up a conversation with a semi-official looking guy that looked my age sitting with us under the canopy. He seemed to understand the border and its many potential pitfalls and was offering to bus us to another bus station in Poipet where we could get the Toyota Camrys that we were supposed to take to Siem Reap. After a good checking by David (unofficial expert on all things Asia travel), the guy was deemed ok.

We arrived to the station which was a mile or so in town and began to negotiate our fares for the four hour ride to Siem Reap. Agreeing on a price and what not, we split ourselves into two camrys. Rob, Matt, and Kiley opted for the hubcapped one with black leather interior while David, Kelsey, and I chose the one without hubcaps with the tan leather interior. Neither exterior would serve a very good guide as to just how crazy our drivers would be.

The first Camry shot off down the road, while ours had a few things to clear up. Our driver was constantly shouting (couldn't tell if it was meant nice or not...Khmer can sound a bit harsh to virgin ears) at other people at the station and finally after splashing his feet in a standing pool of brown water, we lurched into hyperdrive through a road that quickly deteriorated into a pot-holed, dirt-covered, animal-filled "passage".

The single comfort for about the first hour and a half came in the first three minutes of our drive when we were stopped by the authorities who seemed to approve the permit our driver had - at least he was certified.

From there (with a laugh by him...and the security officer...a laugh that caused Kelsey and myself to look at each other with terrified doe eyes), we sped at about 120 KMpH down the road - bodies jiggling from the constant assault of bumps.

We cringed at each bus that we would narrowly slip by. We covered our ears, trying to figure out why our driver used his horn so much (It's a polite Cambodian way of saying, "Pardon, but I shall be passing you in just a wee bit and would you mind just schooching over a tad so I can slip by?"). We nibbled on bread and sipped on water to calm our frightened stomachs. And then after only an hour had passed, I - in an effort to comfort myself - started to think about what things came in three hour chunks...besides the rest of our car ride. (In case you were curious, I came up with Forrest Gump, The Sound of Music, certain wedding receptions of people you don't know very well, flights from Houston to LA, exams ... minus Forrest Gump, you can see how morbid I was getting). I couldn't even close my eyes, because without the sight of the horrifying speed with which we were passing everything, I only became more aware of the declining state of my stomach and the decreasing capacity of my bladder.

But finally, just as I was hitting the depths of my moods, my body began to habituate to the constant rattle. I turned my thoughts and vision outside of my own internal suffering and beheld the magnificent Cambodian countryside we were blazing through. Just as Thailand had been, Cambodia is like the Delta (the Mississippi one) only with mountains, wet rice fields, and palm trees. But what made this country especially beautiful was the sky. It seemed enormous - with these tremendous cloud creatures swimming through it. It became funny that we were driving with our right blinker on a straight road and it even became a little joke how there were "road construction" signs on this road that didn't look like it had ever been built. Our driver even laughed from time to time when a little girl would wave at us from her roadside house.

Things were looking up until - admiring the sky again - I noticed that they had darkened into a near black wall - a concern because a) we were driving on a dirt road that when mixed with rain would become a mud road and b) the "road" we were driving on was a tiny levee cutting between the two stretches of rice fields on both of our sides.

Minutes later our car was covered in rain and the fields - just as I had feared - began laking up. Nevertheless, children still rode serenly on their bikes through the torrents of rain and chickens still chased the curious puppies that decided to sniff too close. Life seemed to continue on outside, and our driver continued to joke from the front seat. Even Kelsey somehow was able to sleep (imagine falling asleep on a trampoline full of 8 year olds...impressive). I reached into by plastic bag and pulled out another piece of white bread and began to suck on it - telling my stomach everything was going to be ok.

And it was. Two long hours later, the constant rumbling sound of the ride suddenly ceased to a smooth swooshing - a sound signalling the arrival of pavement beneath our wheels. We looked up and knew that we were close to Siem Reap as the buildings began to grow (you would not believe how many nice hotels are here) and traffic (of the ordinary sort) began to fill up the roads - thankfully slowing down our driver in the process.