Getting Around

3-10-09

With April, and Khmer New Year, coming up fast, most people are making travel plans. I figured I might as well take this opportunity to explain to people back home about how we get around here in Cambodia…and how much it sucks.

There are three ways to travel in Cambodia: taxi, van, or bus. I don’t have any experience with the buses here; none run to Svay Rieng, and I haven’t traveled anywhere where I would need to take them. From what I’ve heard traveling by bus in Cambodia isn’t that much different than by bus in the US. But I do have plenty of experience with traveling by bus or taxi.

First, you start your journey with the driver trying to rip you off. Unless you know the driver personally, or there is a fixed rate from your location to the destination (and the driver knows you know it), the driver will try and charge you more because you are a foreigner. And all foreigners are rich! Of course they can pay $15 to go to a town half an hour away. Usually the price is about $2, sometimes less. This negotiation and attempted rip-off is always a fun way to start a journey.

The vans and taxis themselves are usually Korean-made vehicles manufactured sometime in the 1980’s. The condition of them is a crap-shoot; you may get lucky and find one that has padding on the seats, or you might get one with rotted food under the seats. And air-conditioning? Forget it.

Once you have found a van or taxi going to your destination, and have negotiated the price down from whatever outrageous figure was thrown at you to begin with, you will then proceed to sit in the hot sun for anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour and a half while the drivers try and find more people who want to ride. Fixed departure schedules? What are those? The vans will eventually leave when they are full. And by full, I mean FULL. A normal, five-seat car will not leave until there are four people in the backseat, two people in the passenger’s seat, and the driver and one other passenger in the driver’s seat. I once rode from Phnom Penh to Neak Loung (the worst place on Earth) in a car that not only had all this, but also someone riding in the trunk. She rode back there for an hour. I hope she at least got a discount.

Vans, on the other hand, will be PACKED with people. It’s impossible to try and figure out how many will be shoe-horned into the thing, but when they run out of space on the inside, they will put more people on the roof. I’ve ridden in vans with people hanging out the windows and maybe a half-dozen up on the roof. Obviously, riding in a van like this is incredibly uncomfortable. You are either smashed up against the window and another person, or between two people. If you are claustrophobic, these vans would probably trigger a panic attack.

Basically, traveling by vans or taxis sucks. With busses you at least get your own seats and air-conditioning, but they cost more and you will have a five-hour ride to look forward to. With all of this it’s a wonder I even bother to travel at all. But going through all this still beats staying at site indefinitely.