Having slept slightly better than the previous night I awoke to torrential rain. I got a motorbike to the area where the bus was to leave from. The motorbike driver gave me a really attractive, yellow macintosh to wear and then kept nearly crashing when trying to pull my hood up for me! One of the reasons for heading to Bangkok (other than my lack of time left in South East Asia) was to try and see a Doctor. When I lost my appetite in Siem Reap Dane was quite worried about this and, other than firstly telling me that I had a mammoth tapeworm so there was no room for food, secondly telling me that I may be having a personal crisis, finally told me an amusing anecdote which was something his mother used to say to him as a child. Okay, you have to read this in a strong Eastern Australian accent.<\/p>\n
"If you don’t eat, you don’t shit and if you don’t shit you die Dane."<\/p>\n
I found this hysterical particularly as advice. I mean, if someone said this to you would you go, "Oh yeah, I’d never thought of it like that" and instantly regain your appetite?<\/p>\n
Anyway, so I’m ill and was informed that the Doctors in Sihanoukville were very expensive and not particularly good. Apparently they also have a habit of keeping you in for several nights when not entirely necessary in order to make more money. So, in view of this I headed for the bus for my twelve hour journey to Bangkok. I was sat at the back of the bus and initially thought that this would afford me greater comfort and leg room. What I wasn’t counting on was getting full wafts of acrid poo smell from the toilet every few mintues. One of the staff would then walk down to the toilet and douse the entire area with what seemed to be about a hot air balloon worth of pungent air freshener. I’ve never really known what’s worse, either disgusting smells or disgusting smells half masked by nearly equally disgusting synthetic ones. This didn’t make me feel much better and, in my state of ill-health, everything started to annoy me.<\/p>\n
When we got on the bus they put ‘Notting Hill’ on. Admittedly not my favourite film but relatively amusing nonetheless. Until, that is, bouffant boy infront of me decides to bobble his huge hair from side to side about every twenty seconds. He also did that thing of answering his mobile and turning it on to loud speaker so that he could prove that he did, infact, have one friend! I bet they were comparing bouffant stories! The next film was King Kong (the new one not the original). If you’ve seen King Kong, one question, "WHY?" and if not, really don’t. I sooooo wanted the woman to die to the extent that I began sharing my thoughts with fellow passengers who laughed inanely and then looked the other way, probably in the hope that the crazy woman would either go away or start talking to the voices in her head again!<\/p>\n
The Thai Border wasn’t too painful, somewhat miraculously in the mood I was in, although I did manage to do two things you are really not supposed to do at border points. Firstly I smiled for the photo they took and secondly I smoked a cigarette when walking over the border. I got quite sternly told off for the latter but honestly hadn’t really thought about it. I had other things on my mind like, how to avoid using the Oompah Loompah toilet, how to shave someone’s head without them noticing, who on Earth paid for King Kong to be re-made, who on Earth paid to go and watch the King Kong re-make etc………….<\/p>\n
So, once we had all sorted out exit passes and entry visas we sat at a cafe next to a lovely channel of open sewage (which smelled nearly as bad as the bus, save the meadow fresh overtones) and waited for about two hours for them to manage to get all twelve of us into a minibus. Well it must have been tricky for them with that number of passengers! Fortunately at this point it started to improve. A nice Austrian man let me have the front seat as I sounded pathetic. Well, in my mind I sounded pathetic, but he may have taken one look at me and offered the seat out of sheer terror, or to keep me separate from the other passengers for their safety! I like riding in the front, although you do have to reconcile the cool views and comfort with the dodgy over-taking heart-in-mouth moments and knowing that, if something does come the other way round that blind bend, you’re the one who’s going to bow out first.<\/p>\n
The roads in Thailand seem to be of a different class to those in the rest of the places I have visited in Asia. For the majority of the journey we were on two or three lane motorways and we passed some comedy boy-racer cars (323s, a Ford I had never seen before etc). There were also some more exciting Lancers and the like. Some time after the first toilet stop I asked if we could stop again. When I walked into the toilet I was greeted by a sign which read, "Winner of toilet of the year 2006", at which point three things crossed me mind:<\/p>\n
1. Wow, I am SOooooo lucky!<\/p>\n
2. Woah, what happened in 2007 and 2008, this place must have gone downhill.<\/p>\n
3. It won’t be winning any awards after I’ve visited it!<\/p>\n
Sorry but I am ill. Or as I keep telling everyone, "I’m invalid"!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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