In a Cambodian bus (for 7 hours)

The most used means of transport in Cambodia for long distances is the bus: what adventures await you there!

 

During the long hours in this spartan bus, you can admire the landscape, watch the people and meet new ones. It is the best means of transport there, even if it is uncomfortable, because the time you spend in these buses is never wasted, it is always a great adventure.

Buses from another age, dusty, rusty, bent and noisy, are waiting for their passengers everywhere, and there is no shortage of them in Cambodia!

 
When the buses seem to be ripe for retirement, there is still the TV that broadcasts Chinese movies, series, like the Z series (if there is one) and the air conditioning.
Sound and temperature at full power are the minimum.
No matter where they go, they are always full as an egg.
Really full.
Parents travel with the children on their knees, a small wooden board is placed in the centre for the surprise guests to sit on, or a chair or a mini plastic stool.
Here, the bus drivers never go on strike. That would be revolution, and for the Cambodians revolution means something.
 

For a distance of one hundred and thirty-six kilometres, it takes four to five hours. In the dry season

 
The bus is colorfull. Young people in jeans, elders in sarongs, monks in orange kasaya, women in costumes, children, whole families, sacks of rice, tree trunks….
Very old women show their widowhood by shaving their heads.
They are twisted like vine stocks and give me a toothless baby smile. They are often very cordial. They show it in strange ways by slapping my arm or my back or holding my hand insistently. It is a manifestation of sympathy towards strangers and tenderness in general.
The only people a woman should not touch are monks, they would lose the sanctity they have accumulated over so long.
The children keep quiet and wait patiently for the ride to end.
Quiet, yes, for seven hours, shaken like plum trees, on daddy’s or the neighbour’s lap.
They eat a mango, a hard-boiled egg, watch films, observe the landscape. The toddlers sometimes run on all fours between the two rows of sits, strangers take them in their arms and pass them from one sit to the next.
If it is a film comedy, the bus writhes with laughter at every gag.
 

The bus often stops to drop off a person or two where there is no stop. All you have to do is ask the driver

 
The little vendors of peeled mangoes and chopped pineapples get on the bus and stay there for a few kilometres, then they get off and wait for the next one, in the middle of the countryside. Do we know where they are going, loaded with their nicely sliced victuals, ready to eat in a plastic bag.
In Cambodia, the bus also acts as a postman. It stops almost everywhere to drop off boxes, plastic bags filled with laundry, appliances, wrapped packages.
Everyone recognises the bus, at the roadside children greet unknown passengers with their hands.
And the bus honks all the time. The horn is used here as flashing light. As soon as it overtakes, a bicycle, a scooter, a tuk-tuk, it warns five or six times. People are not shocked or even angry at all, they just push.
 

No priority on the right or anything, you have to sneak up, honk and look around. Cambodians don’t drive very fast, and the lack of respect for the Highway Code doesn’t seem to cause any more deaths than anywhere else. The drivers are very attentive, that’s all

 
The bus is crowded, tired, on this bumpy road.
The cows are lean, skeletal, the fields are dry at this time of year.
Forty degrees in the shade.
There is always room on Cambodian buses, even when there is no more place.
People don’t always talk to each other, but they are together.
They are always smiling. You just have to look them in the eye and they smile back.
Right next to me, a young couple with a tiny baby.
A little girl.
The mother wears a light green blouse, silver bracelets and a red wire bracelet on her wrists.
Her brown skin, the colour of burnt bread, her long black hair tied with a green ribbon, her still face, everything is harmonious.
Her long, graceful hands delicately hold the little one, beautifully dressed in aniseed green, wrapped in a red towel. She also wears ankle and wrist bracelets and a red cloth cord with silver coins attached.
When the little one is restless, she is nursed by Mami.
What sweetness, what love.
In the small and fragile arms of this young woman lies all the strength in the world.
And in that moment, all is well. Through the carefully drawn curtain, the sun shines on the small, delicate and slender hands that open and close like sea anemones.
A tiny toe sticks out of the bright red blanket.
The beads of sweat on her forehead, on her mother’s chest, under her green blouse, the sparkling bracelets.
 
Mum sometimes looks at her neighbours, these white strangers, these Fangs, with a questioning and worried look, especially when Dad proudly hands me the baby to hold.
It is a Cambodian bus where there is always place, even when there is no more room.
In this bus full of men, women, children, full of engine noise, horns, voices.
No threat, no fear, no danger in this chaos.
A little girl sleeps safe and secure in her mother’s arms.

Discover your next travel adventure!

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

error

Vous aimez cet article ? Partagez-le ou réagissez !

error: Content is protected !!