This day was full of travel. I boarded a bus in Battambang Province in the morning and didn’t arrive home in Svay Rieng Province until evening. 11 hours of sitting in my own pools of sweat does not make me a particularly pleasant person - I even chastised a complete stranger for taking too long in the Sokimex gas station (the aircon wasn’t working on the Capitol bus from Battambang to Phnom Penh and then I had to sit in the van at Olympic Market for over an hour waiting for them to get enough passengers).
As I’m nearing my special leave to the States for a month, I’ve been contemplating how I’ll adjust back and trying to appreciate the fullness of what I’ve been experiencing here in Cambodia. As I sat in the touri (van) on my way from Phnom Penh to Svay Rieng, something that has become a common experience which I undertake without thought or appreciation, I tried to take note of what was around me:
I noted the 24 people fitted into a 15 passenger van (actually a bit more roomy than my typical ride), the baby who looked to be a mere month old who cried not even once during the 4 hours it was in the van, the young couple who shared the passenger seat, the adolescent boy who was too put off by the ‘barang’ to sit next to me, the driver who I trust enough to hand my bags (which housed my computer and passport) to and walk away in search of market food and not even check to see if they made it safely into the vehicle, the mass of people buying bread in bulk at our obligatory bakery stop out of the city to bring back to the rural province where the bread just isn’t as delicious, the man who crawled out of the window at the ferry because it’s too much of a hassle to climb from the back to the door, the young boy who begged at the vans, cars, and buses as we waited to board the ferry and who was happy to get an empty pop can, the police officer who took a 50 center (2000 riel) bribe to let us cut in line to board the ferry, and the passengers would talk to each other about me but not to me and who would ask the driver and a woman from my village questions about my life even though they knew I could understand and speak their language.
Won’t life in the States be boring and monotonous compared to this? Moreover, for a country with supposedly good infrastructure, why am I going to have to rent a car when I go back to visit? Why can’t I just catch a ride from a passing van or bus like I do here?
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