Bus to Seam Riep

I had not been excited to take the 7:00am bus to Siem Riep since it was New Year's Day and I thought it would be good to sleep in. However it was the only option besides flying and flying was MUCH more expensive. I also felt bad that Jessica would have to spend 12 hours on a bus during her vacation, but she generally likes to be thrifty and seemed ok with it. The first bus was completely blinged out with so much embellishment we couldn't believe it. There wasn't even any rhyme or reason to it- butterfly stickers, diamond studs, tassels, you name it! The bus was completely full of people and Alyssa had opted to sit in the back of the bus instead of with us so that she could have a window seat. Jessica and I sat near the front of the bus so we had a good view of everything going on. There was a tour group on the bus that had hired an Australian man who was living in Cambodia to be their tour guide, so we also took advantage of his knowledge when we had questions about what to do.
We stopped to cross the border from Vietnam to Cambodia about two hours into the trip. The border crossing was really easy since we had filled out all of the forms and given our passports to the bus attendant ahead of time. All we needed to do was pass through the line so that they could scan our finger prints and match our face to our passport picture and we were done. We then stopped just down the road to get some early lunch. Luckily they would still accept Vietnamese Dong since we were so close to the border which was good because we hadn't switched to Cambodian Riels yet. We got some delicious beef pho and then got back on the road. Jessica took a sleeping pill so she was able to sleep through a lot of the ride.

We arrived in Phnom Penh after seven hours where we needed to change buses for the second half of the journey. They didn't have any food in the bus terminal or the surrounding area, but they did have a coffee shop that offered smoothies. I wanted a banana strawberry smoothie but the girl said I could not have one fruit so I opted for a banana smoothie. I quickly found out that the reason she didn't want to make the strawberry smoothie was because the "banana smoothie" consisted of ice and apple juice. I had watched her make it so I knew exactly what was in it but I asked her "banana smoothie?" to which she said "yes". I could tell due to her lack of English and really lack of caring that I would not win the battle and since it was the only thing around and I had been battling some motion sickness on the bus, I paid the $2.50 USD (insanely high price!) for the damn apple ice.

We got into our second bus where we were all able to sit together and powered through the additional seven hour ride. We stopped at one point about two hours outside of Siem Reap to get some dinner. Since we weren't sure what our food options would be when we arrived into town, we ordered some noodles since it was the only thing on the menu. They were fine but after a while you get sick of eating so many carbs! When we arrived in Siem Reap, it was dark outside and much colder than it had been in Vietnam. We had pre-ordered a tuk tuk to take us to our Thurnbury Hotel, so we piled all of our bags inside and were on our way.

The area of town we were staying in was very nice. We had been worried when the bus pulled into town that everything looked like slums but the area where our hostel was located was very upscale and obviously touristy. We had a spacious three bed room and quickly showered and got into bed since we were exhausted from our day of travel.

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