Mrs. Pineapple and Mrs. Bread: a bus ride

I write this from the very loud capitol city of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. Sitting in a substantial red arm chair, the hilariously out of place seating option here in this internet cafe: hilarious considering how this chair contrasts with the litter of candy wrappers and half-drunk bottles and irksome techno music around.

We came here on more than 2 wheels each: thanks to a bus. The road between Siem Reap and the capitol city was appalling: pot holes like toilet bowls, the road more like a weathered tarp than a road it was patched so much, the asphalt edges frayed and dropping to a stony red dirt shoulder, in places more than a foot drop down. The air was dull and thick with dust, heat, and fumes. And this was National Highway 6, which is Cambodia's equivalent to Route 80 in the states. We only have 2 months to ride this trip, and we might as well ride in conditions which aren't so harrassing.

At the bus station this morning: the ticket company advised us to get there at 7am for a 7:30 departure and the bus left Cambodia style right on time, at 8:10. While waiting for this departure I watched Mrs. Pineapple cutting her fruit for sale to passengers. She skinned the pineapples, and cut them into strips that fanned out from the bottom like the spokes of an upturned umbrella. Finally she dunked the cut pineapples into a bucket of standing water. I cringed watching this; that water was most likely not the potable water we see in blue drinking jugs, but instead water from the taps, which is untreated and unsanitary. The guidebooks warn tourists to prepare with typhoid, Hepatitis A, and cholera shots before coming here AND to only ever, forever amen, drink bottled or filtered water.

I prefer to buy my own fruit and peal it myself. And let me digress for a minute and say, even through the rubbishy mess and polluted water and exhausty air in this country, eating papayas and mangoes and bananas here is an absolute joy. Every papaya I messily peal with my pocket knife, getting sticky everywhere, and then eat far too much of, is The Most Delicious Papaya of My Life. 

Mrs. Bread was also plying the bus waiting area, a wide circle of bread basket balanced on her head. Even though I barely looked at her, she must of tuned into my wave-band of baked-goods love; she took down her load and showed me the white fluffy bodies of baguettes and buns. Ok....fine.....I asked the price of the buns. $1 (4,000 riel). Too much! In my deliberating pause she changed this to 3,000 riel. "2,000 riel" I replied, and this time she paused for a moment and then, "yes!" We'd come to a price we were both happy with. I'm learning to bargain here and feel that I am becoming more assertive, both in getting what I'd like and turning away (tuk-tuks) what I don't. The bun was a cloud and tasted of memories of Polish Easter breads of family-times past.

We had the very front seat of the bus, sitting above the driver, watching the endless brown, wizened, flat landscape roll by. The bus bucked and swayed and honked the 8 hour journey and we arrived with intact bicycles and corrugated bums.

Men around bus loading areas are spitting, smoking cigarettes, bothering us to take their tuk-tuk taxis. I dislike riding buses because I feel no longer the helmsman of my trip, also unproductive, stiff, and on someone else's time-line but it's a good practice in Patience. And also, decidedly, preferable to bicycling these roads. "The worst road conditions I have ever seen" said Lay-DEE Elise, and she's been in Cameroon, Alaska, New Zealand....and is not prone to exaggeration. I agreed with her.

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Speaking of: I must alert my dear readers. "Buddy Lissy" has requested a name change on the blog; she is now "Lay-DEE Elise." Because when in the tourist areas this is what we hear: "Hello lay-DEE you want cold drink lay-DEE you come to my table ok lay-DEE?" This hawking aggravates us; if we want a cold drink we can see you have a cooler, and we'll come over ourselves. You don't need to walk with us for 10 feet brandishing your drink bottles in our faces and repeating yourself, especially after we've said "no thanks."

So she is now Lay-DEE Elise. My absolutely stalwart and good-humored travel buddy.