Traveling to Battambang
My eventual destination in Cambodia is Siem Reap, and the most common way to get there is by bus. It’s a long bus ride, depending on the company and the number of stops, it can take 8-9 hours. I decided instead to break up the journey by taking a bus to an intermediary point and staying a couple of days, then moving on to Siem Reap.
So in the morning of my last day in Phnom Penh, I boarded a “Luxury Van” from Phnom Penh to Battambang, a town about 200km to the northwest of Phnom Penh. The bus ride was to last about 5-6 hours.
My Luxury Van to Battambang
The Phnom Penh Bus Stop
The reality of the luxury van was quite a bit less luxurious than the description and picture online. But it was air conditioned, and I had the luck of riding shotgun with the driver, so I had great views of the countryside and roadside as we made our way first through Phnom Penh, and then through the countryside. We stopped a couple of times for bathroom breaks and had a 30 minute stop for lunch at a roadside restaurant/gas station.
I took pictures of the daily life going on outside the van as we traveled. One thing that surprised me was how well constructed and maintained the main highway was between Phnom Penh and Battambang. Overall, the trip went well and took about five and a half hours.
