The P-units drop me off at the bus and peace out. I’m standing around, looking at my bus, waiting for the guy to let me load my bags. I call Elyssa to let her know that I’m leaving. Seconds later, she calls me back, telling me to look out for this Ruhi woman. I asked for a description, and, each bit of information she passed on correlated to the body in front of me! So I just walked up to her and was like “Ruhi?” and she said yes, and how did I know, etc. We then got a chance to hop on the bus, and decided we’d continue our conversation at the next bus stop. It being the fast, we both slept through the whole 5 hour ride to Battambang, postponing our friendship-building until later.
Back to the party:
It was pretty sweet, set on the rooftop of Gems International School, with around 20 attendees. We ended up eating kind of late, but I broke the fast with a mouth-watering coconut, so I was in no rush anyway. Prema made some tasty chocolate fudge cake, and banana-chocolate cake. Sweetest birthday presents ever. We all played Mafia after dinner, with Sopheap (from CORDE) being the first victim of the mafia. Ryan “interlashional” lash turned out to be the mafia ringleader, and after he fell, the rest followed suit. Alas, I was the final victim of the Mafia. The next few days involved sleep, Settlers of Catan, and mango shakes – I like!
Trip to Bangkok
Saturday the 14th, Quddus and I hop in a taxi to Poipet (Cambodia-Thailand border town). The taxis in Cambodia insist on having a minimum of 6! Passengers for each trip. After the guy came to get us, he needed three more. So we roll up to this random part of BB, where taxi drivers and potential passengers congregate. It was hilarious to watch: as each passenger arrives (usually on a moto), all the taxi drivers walk over and try to win over their business. The tactics ranged from grabbing their luggage and walking towards their taxi, to paying for the moto, to insulting other taxi drivers, to what our guy did, which was point to the foreigners in his taxi. I felt like he should have given us a discount. Either way, we ended up leaving with a decent 5 passengers in a regular sized sedan: Quddus, a negligibly-sized Cambodian guy, and I sitting in the back, while two ladies shared the front seat. We all had to fork up an extra dollar so that the guy would drive, but it was worth it. I’ve learnt some Khmer by this point, so I could make out the conversation between the two ladies, talking about the “thom-thom’s” in the back seat. Thom, of course, meaning “large”. So I let them know that I knew by laughing when they said it, and once the ice was broken, we had some good times speaking back and forth in broken khmer.
Then we got to the border in Poipet.We waited in line to immigrate, hoping we wouldn't end up like this:
We made it through with plenty of time to organize a ride to the International Ariport. After shopping around for options, we settled on a little minivan for 300 baht (originigally 350). Making sure that we were guaranteed a ride straight to the airport. Of course, once we were near the airport, the guy feigned ignorance, and insisted that he was only going to Suvarnhabumi town, not to the airport with the same name. *sigh* After leting him know that we wouldn't be paying an extra 100 baht each, and Quddus insisting that we get a chance to speak to his managers, he shook his head, waved his hands, and gave up his quest for extra cash. We met a cool Cambodian guy who was on his way to visit a friend in Bangkok. His name was Paul - which I didn't believe at first, and demanded he give me his real khmer name. As it turns out, Paul is a khmer name as well (it was like wei-paul or something).The Bangkok airport is actually a cool spot to hang out for a while (lucky for us). In our hurry to reach the airport, we'd provided ourselves 5 hours before our flight, and 2 hours before we could even check in!(which we discovered after waiting in line at 3pm). I burned up time by reading another chapter out of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The chapter I read was titled "The Complete Annihilation of the Western Empire" - so good.
Then we went back into the lineup (where the air asia ladies asked Quddus to pose for a photo with them, sexy time!):
After getting through passport control, we hunted for a place to break the fast (this airport is horrible to be fasting in, the smells of delicious food are everywhere). Food was tasty (but soo pricy!), we also had a tasty dipped cone from DQ.I had, for some unkown reason, decided to pack my toiletries in my carry-on. I know, I haven't packed them in my carry on for ages! Ridiculous. Either way, I haggled with them to let me keep my aftershave (unmarked bottle!) and had to let go of some aveda haircream that I got in montreal. I tried to convince them to take the hair cream, but they weren't really interested. I think they genuinely felt bad about taking it away by the end of the conversation, but this didn't stop them from doing their job...too bad :( Quddus and I made jokes about the fast being a time of detachement anyway, so I little mourned the loss of some haircream.
We boarded the plane, took our seats, and had a sweet fligh out to malaysia. We were about to buy bus tickets from the air hostess, but the couple behind us gave us theirs becuase their friends were coming to pick them up. Sweet! Quddus and I had an "amazing race"-style landing. We quickly made our way to the front of the line of people walking to passport control, were the first to get our bags, and first to bust out of the airport! Where we found, to our surprise and excitment, our friends, waiting to pick us up! (here's us putting our "M's" down for Malaysia)
End Part One.
No comments:
Post a Comment