The nite before brought me great joy, when the printer arrived just after Sabbath with 2 boxes full of 100 newly-printed Khmer 1858 Great Controversys. So with a joyous heart i went to bed. From 1am – 3am i couldn’t sleep, thinking about what had happened, and what was planned to happen the next day and near future. The mama cat calling for her one kitty unable to claw it’s way out of a room reminded me of the here and now tho 🙂 After returning to sleep, i dreamed the worst dream i’ve ever had. Perhaps this was a precusor to what kind of day i was going to have.
Things started out well enough, the young man of the house kindly took me to the Sorya bus company’s station near Central Market. I arrived at 6:15 for the 6:30 departure time. Hmmm, our bus is behind another bus that has a “7:00” sign in the front window. Not good. Sure enough, we get out of there a bit after 7:00, only to wait another 15 minutes or so just outside the station… Time to eat! I bite into the crunchy apple, and with some crackers and raisins and p-nuts, makes a standard travelling-fare breakfast.
About an hour later, i realized my stomach was telling me the apple was too acidic. This happened before to me with apples, when i ate 2 very acidic ones in India in ’98, and paid for it with all my insides for about 16 hours. It wasn’t as bad as fresh gralic attacks i’ve had several times that have lasted for 2 days, or even the durian in Vietnam last year, but it was bad. Now i’m on a bus, just starting a long trip back to Bangkok. What to do? Pray, pray, pray.
Our bus stops at the usual place about 1 1/2 hours outside of Phnom Penh. Looks like all the ladies are going to the 3 toilets, so i head off to where the men are, peeing all over a field, and most of them pointing towards a pond in back of the eating establishment where assorted plastic articles are half-floating. The surroundings match my condition perfectly. I have another sneezing attack while staring out at the road. Thinking about my nose a bit helps keep it off my stomach.
As you might imagine, the road is not very smooth, so the stomach gets natrally churned up anyway on this road. We stop again (for lunch?) in a little less than 3 hours, and i head to the toilets just in case. Fortunately, everything stays in. (Just now, while typing this on 5/17, i look out and see the coastline of Vietnam – looks like lots of orangish-brown sand).
I get the usual hot feeling, almost like a fever, and sweating etc. that usually happens just before vomiting. I rue the moment i he-manly refused the little black plastic “vomit” bag they passed out at the beginning of the trip. The high-school aged boy next to me took one, and seemed surprised i didn’t need it. He said he always has to eat something when he travels by bus, or else he gets motion sickness. We have a pretty good talk, and even tho he has never travelled outside of his country, and not even much inside his country, he thinks he knows quite a bit about the world. He tells me that there are no bicycles in Vietnam, as they are all getting rich and have motorcycles and cars now. I assure him that i was in Vietnam 2 months before, and that while there are many cars and motorcycles, still many people have bicycles. He doesn’t think so. OK, whatever.
People are let on and off at various points along the way. We have a 50-seater bus, and i figure if every seat makes around 6.5usd on this one run, they are making a small fortune. Every seat does get used, altho some not for the full run. The bus has one driver, and one ticket-taker, and is a Daewoo made from Korea – with a very good air-con (read: too cold). This is the first time i’ve ever felt cold in Cambodia, and it is a strange feeling, but nice for my feverish condition, drying the sweat rolling down my normally dry back.
The bus is a bit slow, lots of horn-honking, and makes many stops in the morning, I’m hoping to catch the 3;30 bus back to Bangkok, but we only arrive at the bad stretch of road, the last 30 km from Sisophon to Poi Pet (border) after 2. The road is seriously bad, and the lady behind me makes good use of her black plastic bag. Each roll and wave of the bus reminds me of the sea, and also of stories how people turn green over the railing etc. I feel like doing the same, but am very relieved that every bounce lets me know exactly how much fluid is left in my stomach, and that it seems to be getting less.
We finally arrive at the border at 4:30, around 2 1/2 hours behind normal. There are only around 10 foreigners on my bus, so we should be able to breeze thru immigration. Wrong. A bus from another direction – Siem Reap, has just unloaded all 50 of its passengers, all foreign. Ut oh. Western foreigners don’t have the same concept of space that Asians do, and while i kindly give way to the talking couple in front of me, finally just pass them, as the time gets closer to my next bus time – 5:30. Also, there is so much space between them and the person in front of them, that people are edging around the chairs from the other side to cut in. I can’t take it, even tho the man is talking about studying Japanese language in Japan, and i edge around them. Just when i reach the window, the man i have passed says something like “I guess they don’t have rules for lining up in China”.
I’m almost running with my backpack and 30 Khmer 1858gc books. I’m on the sidewalk, but a Cambodian policeman points me over across the road to the right side. This is ridiculous, as i’ve walked this sidewalk before, and others are too, but i follow orders with the little bit of remaining smile i can muster. 50 meters later is where the sign for pedestrians to cross on the left side of the bridge is, so i cross back over. I hit the Thailand immigration line, filling out my arrival card in line. A lady is motioning forward – what? All the group in front of me is busily filling out their cards, and the immigration officers are just waiting. OK! I pass several people, and the immigration lady almost takes care of my business in less than one minute, then turns another page in my passport, notices lots of previous Thai stampings, and gets out her calculator – ha!
Again i nearly run the 500m or so to the bus. There is a racket here, where some company gets all the “foreigners” to take to Bangkok. I’ve seen this man several times, and he is calling out to me with his bullhorn to come to his bus. I ignore him. He is not amused. He sends a young boy out to catch me. I’m looking for my bus to Bangkok. I go here and there, and then a guard man comes up to me, asking to see my ticket. I show it to him, and he walks away, with the “racket” man looking glumly down and away.
It is 5:20 now, and my ticket shows one bus leaving at 5:30, and the last one at 7:30. I walk around asking many people, and even find a bus with the same name as on my ticket, but am assured it is going a different place. The ticket man on the bus might be in with the racket-man, i think in my growing desperation, so ask another person, and am told the same thing. OK. Someone points me across the parking lot, and there are 3 men who cannot possibly be influenced by the racket-man. One of them points to his bus as the one, and motions back to where i came from, and he will come around. He does come around pretty soon, with a sign on the front of his bus saying “6:15”. I cannot understand the “aboutness” of this country, but just glad that they do have something.
I’m one of the first on the bus, and relaxing in the huge seats, when the lady ticket taker comes by. I happily show her my yellow ticket stub, what was given me two weeks earlier when i purchased a ticket going to Cambodia from Bangkok. She takes it, shakes her head “no”, and looks serious as she walks away. Ut-oh. She comes back quickly, and tells me to go sit at the rear of the bus. OK, if that’s all that is required of me, no problem. I get my 2 backpacks slink down in the back corner of the bus, pretty safe now i think – wrong. A male ticket taker comes, followed by the previous lady, and he tells me something that is hard to understand in English, but finally i get the idea that my ticket has expired. How can this be? I used a ticket last time that was 6 weeks old with no problem, how’s come this 2-week old return ticket is no good? I plead with him that i purchased the ticket, and need to use it. He says “two days” that i can understand, and finally get the idea that the return portion of the ticket expires if not used within 2 days. Of course nothing like that is written on the ticket itself, but how to argue that? Mostly i just plead with him to let me stay on the bus, and pray, and he finally says “OK”, and walks back down the aisle. I let out a big sigh of relief, and slink down further in the corner, happy to be at rest at last. “Thank you Jesus” is on my lips and heart.
Hey, maybe now i can even eat something?! The acid appears to be gone, and i’m getting concerned about using up reservoirs of energy that aren’t replaced so well as you get older, so decide to just eat crackers – maybe they will even absorb some of the remaining acid? Seems to, as they make my stomach happy, and i have to restrain myself from not emptying the whole box into my mouth.
I must have dozed a bit, as i wake up biting my tongue. Soon i see some familiar sights – Bangkok! Looks good to me. I get off at Lumphini Park. Well, i TRY to get off. I have two backpacks, and have to walk down some tight steps around a corner inside the bus to get outside. Perhaps my shoes got a bit of oil or something when in the toilet a few minutes earlier, as the toilet had water and other things swishing/swhashing on the floor. Whatever it was, i slipped on the 3rd step. Caught myself! I start to congratulate myself on my youthful nimbleness, when i slip on the next step too! It is a bit more difficult to recover from this one, but i must get out, as i’m the last one at this stop. Would you believe a third slip? This time i bang my elbow up really good against a metal bar. I’m a bit dazed, and still one step to go. Yep, a bit of a slip again, but not too bad. I’m VERY thankful that no motorbike was coming between me and the curb (often happens here), as i just about fall out with my two backpacks, but manage to keep both soles on the ground – another whew! today. I assess damage after putting down one bag, and see a lot of dark-red life juice visible at my left elbow. I get out a 2-week old piece of tissue to put over it, and start to make my way to the overhead pedestrian bridge, as i need to get to the other side to catch my last bus of the day.
I’m very careful on the metal steps, and feel my weakness tremendously. Please keep my legs upright Lord. The bus stop is mostly empty, so i get to sit down, and in 15 minutes, after starting to get a bit antsy about a bus coming, number 115 shows up. Yes! It is mostly empty, and i get a seat to myself. When it lets me off, it is already around 10:20pm. I’m very sorry to wake up the couple that said i could stay with them, but what to do? I thot about calling them before getting on this bus, but couldn’t find any 1-baht coins until right when the bus came. Oh well, hopefully they will greet me nicely. They do, even waking up one of them, and instead of being cross with me for being late, they both seem quite happy to see my tired face 🙂 A prayer and shower with a bit of alcohol on my wound cap my hard day, and within seconds of hitting the down comforter on the kitchen floor, i’m fast asleep.
Thank you Lord for allowing me to work for you, and for your protection and guidance today. Thank you keeping me safe, and bringing me back in one piece, without having to pay anything extra. I’m also thankful for not throwing up on the bus. Please continue to guide. Never leave or forsake me. I will follow.
NOTE: Story about one day in mid May, 2007, in Cambodia