Laos to Cambodia - The Journey from Hell!

All started well as we boarded our nice new minbus for the journey from four thousand islands to the border, only 20km away, until we turned off the main sealed highway and onto a narrow, bumpy track (far worse than any track in Wareham bog) for 30mins before arriving at a small hut in the middle of the jungle, AKA "The Laos Immigration"...but at least we got there the other minibus trailing us broke down in a cloud of steam never to be seen again!! Crossing the border with little further hassle the first action was one of nature....Chris dissappearing into the jungle with his trusty toilet roll to take an emergency dump (too many chillis) directly opposite the immigration office - classy (all to avoid the $1 toilet fee) We were told we were to board a direct bus through to the Capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh (P.P.). This so called direct bus however first had to negotiate crossing the Mekong River, not via the lovely brand new bridge but after an hour wait we crossed via a makeshift vehicle ferry which was pushed across using a tug boat - one foul move by the tug boat driver and we would be drifting off out of control down the Mighty Mekong! Not even then did we hit the road for P.P first they kindly dropped us off at the company restaurant where we had a 2 hour wait to allow everyone to buy all their overpriced food!! Stubborn as ever we went exploring and found local market for some cheap eats. Then the journey could get going (3pm by this time, having left at 8.30am)...but our last bus had broken down getting off the vehicle ferry so we were moved onto a smaller bus with no windows and no aircon - in 30+ degrees this does not make for a fun journey! But at least we travelled fast along nice sealed roads arriving at the town of Kratie for 5.30pm for yet another 1hr wait followd by another change of bus!!! This is where things really took at turn for the worse - we were hoarded onto the smallest, crappest minibus with not enough seats for everyone, and half the seats that did exist were broken! If thats not enough rather than going back onto the highway the driver took a detour via the local backstreets to pick up about half a tonne of timber which was cleverly hidden under our bags on the roofrack. He then continued to drive along the worst roads ever imaginable - in places it looked no more than a track through a farmers field!! The driver was being particularly cagey about his cargo, paying off a local security guard and I can only assume his timber to be illegal (?) hence our choice of roads! It was certainly no shortcut, at 11.30pm in pitch darkness we were told we were still 3hrs away from P.P. we all were tired, in pain and more than just a little bit fucked off with our driver (our supposed E.T.A. in P.P. was to be 8pm)!!! We'd had enough and at the next big town we demanded he stop and 6 of us got off, the good old Lonely Planet helping us to alter our plans and therefore end this horrendous journey!!! It all worked out well, we managed to book into a very helpful and cheap guesthouse which even got us booked onto the 7am bus the following morning to Siam Reap....we will now go to P.P. after seeing Angkor Wat.

Passport Control....the smile didn't last long as it was straight off into the bush after this!