Cambodia is Bumpy

After glimpsing the country briefly from Preah Vihear, we re-entered Cambodia at the Aranyaprathet – Poipet border crossing. My dad remarked that the experience reminded him of an old New Yorker cartoon in which a thunderstorm stops at a state line in the Western U.S.

Road quality changed abruptly between Thailand and Cambodia. Here’s an image, borrowed from a BBC webpage, of the highway we traveled. Five hours of vibrations and dust and close overtaking nearly did us in. Luckily, there wasn’t much traffic—nearly as many oxcarts as engine-powered vehicles.

Until we reached Siem Reap, that is. The home of Angkor Wat might as well have been another country. Brand new pavement instead of potholes. A gleaming hotel every few hundred yards. We didn’t so much notice the fall of darkness as we did the rise of neon.

If we had flown in and flown out of the country, we couldn’t have said we had been to Cambodia. But I’m also glad we didn’t have to return to Thailand by car.