Phnom Penh - End Game

The last week has provided one or two challenges that have stretched my friendship with Laos and Cambodia.

Border Crossing
Hawk and I had been reading that the overland border crossing from Laos to Cambodia could be a little problematic, so we decided to bus it. We rode out of Pakse, down to the Champasek and then onto the Don Khong Islands to see a few more waterfalls, and have the pleasure of eating at a few nice restaurants on the banks of the Mekong.

In Champasek we were going to be seeing the temple at Wat Phu, said to rival many of the other great Khmer sites, ''including Angkor Wat''. It didn't unfortunately and our disappointment wasn't tempered by the fact that we were fast running out of money and the promised banking facilities at Champasek weren't there. So we had to ride back to Pakse, where the machine wouldn't accept my card.

Then because of the delay we sped things up with a lacal bus, a songtheow, to Don Khong. We loaded our bikes on the roof and got in, ready to go. We went - 2 hours later - with half a village, two fridges, a spare motor, 40 bags of rice and half a tonne of cabbages.

In Don Khong we stayed a fabulous guest house run by Mr Poh who arranged everything including our tour of the 4000 islands and a luxury minibus across the border to Phnom Penh. Cool!
Not quite. The tour of the 4ooo islands invloved a 1.5 hour boat trip to another island to look at waterfalls ''Like Niagra Falls'', but smaller and more like rapids, for 4.5 hours and another set of waterfalls for an hour. And our luxury minibus trip across the border involved 3 mini bus changes, each of reduced quality, a few éxtra' payments to officials and being dumped at a town over the border without a conecting bus until the next day.

But now I'm in Cambodia, Phnom Penh, full of all the facilities and comforts I could want, and just three more days of riding up to Siem Reap.
Unfortunately no Cinderella ending here. While riding back from The Killing Fields, which we couldn't find because there were no signs and no-one knew what we were talking about, I got lost, crashed my bike and smashed my arm. No more riding. Arhhhhh - more buses.
Cpp