More hills, remoter still
6 December – I have come down from Mondulkiri hills and am updating my travel log on other hills, actually the remotest you could find in this country. I am in the dusty town of Ban Lung, nothing but a crossroads of two wide dirt streets with little traffic but plenty of dust. You know when a vehicle drives by because a cloud of red powder rises and gradually settles after passing through your nostrils, getting into your eyes and smearing your clothes.
The journey up to here was tiresome: 6 hours by bus with two short stops, plus a “technical” break for the passengers who needed it to get down the bus and find a secluded spot on the road side to relieve themselves. The journey was not comfortable due to the road condition, that in spite of not being utterly disastrous, didn’t allow a smooth progress. At least today’s driver showed more consideration to us passengers by driving at the speed that the road condition permits, unlike yesterday’s crazy bloke who sped all the way down to Snoul and made me feel as if in a tumble dryer. In Snoul I got off the bus and I would have liked to while away the waiting reading my book, had not a French lady got hold of me and started a drawn-out conversation without the possibility of an escape.
8 December – It is now my last stop before the flight back. I'm in Trat, Thailand, and about to get on the bus to Bangkok airport. Getting here from Sihanoukville was a jolly good adventure.To be true, Sihanoukville must have a spell about it, because thinking back reaching it from Kampot was a very bizarre trip, too. For the sake of symmetry, then, it is fair enough for the trip out to have gone as it went.
I don’t really see what could possibly make a foreigner, such as that English guy Hugh, decide to settle down in Cambodia. There must certainly be very good reasons, but I can’t find anything really attractive, now that I'm looking at the lower-middle class block buildings in the district where my hotel is located and am transposing the unpleasant humid and sticky sensation caused by the weather - now at its best - to life in general in this country.
10 December - I have got to Phnom Penh after the longest bus ride that lasted well 12 consecutive hours, that is to say all day yesterday, on roads that were the horrible dirt Ratanakiri ones at first and became more acceptable as I went, even if they started to be beset by traffic near the capital. We risked a collision with stray domestic animals more than once. They don’t feel the danger and blowing the honk repeatedly doesn’t help much. It’s not easy either to anticipate their path and sharp braking was sometimes inevitable to avoid a head-on crash with a carefree strolling cow. I admired a fascinating sunset on rice fields near the city, this time with rosy and purple, then red hues.
