One thing I know about myself: the actual act of traveling (getting from point a to b) stresses me out. I’m definitely the person who would rather be extra early to the airport and have to waste some time rather than rush there at the last minute. I am a planner and I like to have all of the information laid out ahead of time, and even more so if something goes wrong. Nothing drives me crazy like boarding an airplane and then sitting on the runway with no word from the captain or crew about why we aren’t taking off. In short I can be a bit of a control freak. However, if long term travel in Southeast Asia has taught me anything so far its that sometimes I need to let go and just go with the flow.

As I already mentioned we really enjoyed taking the train in Vietnam but, unfortunately, there weren’t train stations in all of the places we wanted to visit, leaving buses as our only option. When it came time for our first bus trip in Vietnam, from Saigon to Can Tho, we did what we would have done at home: we went online and found the bus company with the best customer reviews. We stumbled around the poorly translated English section of their website and found the bus we wanted to catch and what we thought was the address of the bus station. When we arrived at that address a few days later we realized that it was actually FUTA Bus’s corporate office, not the bus station. But a nice lady inside handed us a slip of paper with the correct address (apparently we weren’t the first person to make this mistake.) That bus ride went smoothly: we bought our tickets, had assigned seats and the bus left exactly on time.

After that first attempt we decided that maybe the internet wasn’t the way to go and that we should just start asking our hostels to book buses for us. The upside to this is that they would often pick us up right at the hostel. The downside is that we were relinquishing any control as far as which bus company we’d actually be using. We would pay at the hotel and see who came to get us.

In one case, the ride from Can Tho to Vinh Long, this meant that the ‘bus’ that our hostel booked for us was actually just a shared taxi with two other people in it- hey even better! In Hue we were told a bus would pick us up at our hotel- something we were immediately dubious about since our hotel was down a narrow alley that only a motorbike could fit down but we waited in the lobby as we were told. About 30 minutes after the bus was supposed to come a man pulls up on a motorbike and tells us that our bus is a few minutes away. Ok… About 10 minutes later the motorbike man tells us to follow him and leads us out onto the street and into a van. ‘Hmm’, we think, ‘maybe this is like the other bus that was really more of a taxi, that’s fine!’ However, after a few minutes driving around Hue the driver pulls over throws open the van door and yells ‘Out!’ and points to a large actual bus that has pulled up behind us which we were apparently transferring to. And I’ve already told the story of our ridiculous transportation saga getting from An Binh back to Saigon and all the way to Hoi An.

What I learned in Vietnam is that I was NEVER going to have all of the information about what was going on and that there were systems at play that I was just never going to fully understand. But somehow things always seemed to work out. We had several buses pick us up a half hour late or more and yet we almost always arrived on time. I’m not going to say bus travel in Vietnam was perfect; the drivers often honk for the entire drive, even on the night buses, and at one point a driver slapped me on the foot for putting my shoes back on before fully exiting the bus (it seems that giving an admonishing smack to dogs, strangers, babies, etc. is generally less frowned upon here than back home.) Overall, though, bus transport went about as smoothly as we could hope for.

And this may have lulled us into a false sense of security when we got to Cambodia. I did almost no research on Cambodia while preparing for this trip. Luckily Megan was on top of it and she was the one who first let us know that almost all bus companies in Cambodia have TERRIBLE records when it comes to both safety and customer service. The internet is full of horror stories. The only bus company with a decent reputation is Giant Ibis so that is who we booked for our overnight bus from Siem Reap to Sihanoukville. That ride went fine; we didn’t sleep well but they actually had an English website where we could book tickets online and everyone we interacted with was polite and helpful.

We took a second ride from Sihanoukville to Kampot and booked with Giant Ibis again. This one also went pretty smoothly, except that the driver stopped 4 or 5 times for 10-15 minutes at a time over the course of a 2 hour drive to pick up and drop off locals on the side of the road. He also drove like a maniac. But they gave us free water so it was all good!

Then it came time for Dan and I to get from Kampot back to Sihanoukville. This time we were heading to a part of Sihanoukville that isn’t served by Giant Ibis. Because we were a little wary about using another bus company we decided to just book a private cab for $35. We found the email address of a tuk tuk driver on an online forum and he said he’d set up a ride for us, scheduled to pick us up at noon from our hotel.

When 1 PM came around and there was still no sign of our cab I started to get a little nervous. People had warned us that the cabs were always late but this seemed excessive. We called the guy who arranged it for us. He seemed a little confused about who I was even though we’d emailed back and forth quite a bit. Once he figured it out he was surprised no one had showed up to get us. He said he would ‘check’ and then hung up. I waited another 20 minutes and called him back again at which point he informed me that he had called 10 drivers and none of them were available but that he’d be over in a few to pick us up in his tuk tuk and take us to the bus station to find a cab. When we got there we were informed that the cab would now be $50 and that we’d have to share it with two locals AND it was unclear whether the driver would actually drop us at our hotel or if he was just going to leave us on the side of the road somewhere- uh no thanks!

After a few exasperated words we jumped out of the tuk tuk and fumed off to go figure out our own transporation. At this point it was 2:30 in the afternoon and we were starting to panic a bit about whether we’d even make it there that night. Kampot has tour offices everywhere that claim they can book tours, buses, cabs, etc. for you. We wandered in to one and told them where we wanted to go. They informed us that a cab at this point would be $60 and that it was too late in the day to book a bus, despite the fact that the bus timetables plastered all over the walls said there was a 4 PM bus.

So we moved on to another one. This time we didn’t even bother asking about a cab and, miraculously, we were told we could purchase two tickets for the 4 PM bus for $6 each. Hallelujah! We were going to make it that night after all! 4 rolled around and no bus. Then, at about 4:15, we were told to get in a tuk tuk that had pulled up (as usual, no explanation about what was happening). The tuk tuk dropped us at another tour office where they asked for our bus tickets, which seemed promising. After another 10 minutes or so our ‘bus’ pulled up. This bus was really just a van, only slightly bigger than a mini van and it appeared to already be full. Luckily one person got off- but there were four of us waiting to get on…

The driver threw open the trunk which was already stuffed to the brim with luggage which all got dumped on the ground. With all the luggage out of the way he pulled down another row of seats- oh good there was room for us! But what about all these bags? After repeatedly slamming the door he managed to get maybe 3 of the 12 bags back into the now-diminished trunk space. The rest he piled in the front, between the front two seats and between the rows of chairs. I really didn’t think it would happen but somehow he managed to fit everything.

From there the ride was relatively uneventful, if not the most comfortable. At one point when we stopped for a bathroom break the driver did climb under the van with a wrench for a few minutes. Not sure what that was about but whatever he did seemed to work because we made it to our stop in one piece!

All things considered this whole saga was not the end of the world. There are plenty of more ridiculous stories out there about transportation gone wrong in Cambodia. It was definitely stressful at the time but we can look back and laugh about it now and it makes for a pretty good story.