Michael Batson

The road distance from Phnom Penh to Saigon (Sài Gòn or Ho Chi Minh City, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, as it’s been now for years though Saigon is widely used informally), is just 226kms, or 206kms (128 miles) as the crow flies. In the 1900s a Frenchman once pedalled the distance on a cyclo in a day on the newly constructed highway built with Cambodian labour, just to show it could be done. I’ve done the trip multiple times by road and one thing I’ve learned is that in the almost 20 years since I first made the trip, the journey time despite improvements in infrastructure and in technology to facilitate cross-border movement, the time it takes hasn’t changed much in all that time.

I once flew between these two cities deciding that after multiple trips by road I just wanted to get there as quickly and effortlessly as possible. I flew with Vietnam Airlines on one of the largest passenger planes ever built, a Boeing 777, the trip taking well less than an hour from take-off to landing. It seemed ridiculous to use a plane constructed and designed for inter-continental flight to travel such as short distance. It was ten minutes to gain altitude, about 15 minutes of actual flight time before the descent began, which if I recall took about another 15 minutes. I think the road journey to Phnom Penh‘s former airport at Pochentong and from Saigon’s Tan Son Nhat International Airport took longer than the flight, which must have laid a massive carbon footprint for such a short journey.

Travel by bus is much the preferred option for making the journey, and is the most common form of land transport. You can go by boat, but this takes a circuitous route and doesn’t go directly to Saigon which to get to you then have to take a bus to complete the journey from the riverside city of Châu Đốc. There are a plethora of bus companies based on both sides of the border that provide services starting from first-thing in the morning right through the day and into the night basically they run 24 hours a day. Some of the bus companies I’m familiar with and have travelled on, or that I’ve seen operating are: Capitol (which has been around for years), Danh & Danh, Giant Ibis, Huiri Express, Kumho Samco (“Doing it down in Viet Nam”), Mai Phoung Nam, Phoung Heng, Ruth Mony, Van Rec, VET, and Virak Buntham, plus a host of others. Like Smarties they come in multiple colours and shades of: blue, green, grey, orange, purple, red, white, yellow, and combinations thereof.

Some like my old favourite the Mekong Express, have vanished. They were once noted for their status as being the only Cambodian bus company out of some 29 enterprises back in the day not to have suffered a serious crash. They hold the record for getting me from Phnom Penh to Saigon the fastest; leaving near Olympic Market by van at 6:30am or so and allowing me to be at my hotel in downtown Saigon before lunch, barely five hours. Other trips were more like a marathon, one taking over 11 hours to make the same journey. Bus services run from both sides of the border starting before dawn and are scheduled every day well into the evening. There are also night buses. In Vietnam the preferred bus type now seems to be sleepers which run even during the day on most routes.

I can only assume that driving a bus between Phnom Penh and Saigon is an exhausting experience for any driver. The concentration expended to maintain safety and get your vehicle and passengers to their destination must be extreme. I’m exhausted just sitting there watching. There’s a multitude of factors to negotiate. There are: the road habits of Cambodians; the narrow main highway to Vietnam called National Route One; the weird, wonderful and sometimes downright dangerous roadside furniture; the general traffic chaos and congestion; overtaking habits of other drivers, not to mention tropical downpours reducing visibility to naught. Then there’s the Vietnam side. Navigating Saigon’s traffic is no picnic either. It can take an hour to clear the city though there’s little to demarcate the urban environs of Vietnam’s largest city from what’s not urban, there being no rural areas visible. It’s built-up all the way to the border almost.

It's easier to distinguish Cambodia from Vietnam and the traffic in each. In Vietnam the millions of motorcyclists wear helmets as do their passengers, whereas in Cambodia this is much less common. Traffic in Vietnam stops at red lights, indicators are used as road traffic enforcers and manufacturers intended. Motorcyclists ride in the designated lanes to the side. Cambodians are apt to turn indicators on one week and off again another week. They do ride to one side but there’s usually not designated lanes for this, rather it’s the hard shoulder if present, which also gets used for other purposes, like parking and food selling. Rearview mirrors on motorcycles in Cambodia are largely for decorative purposes or used for body maintenance. I suspect most Cambodian drivers don’t use these either, ever. My bus driver on the last return leg to Phnom Penh dutifully wore his seatbelt in Vietnam but as soon as we were across the border into Cambodia he removed it. Going the other way a red light almost caught out our Cambodia driver barely five minutes over the border in Vietnam, when I think he suddenly realized where he was.

My latest journey to Vietnam from Cambodia’s capital city began early, before dawn. In the dark I arrived by tuk-tuk at Van Rec’s office near the city’s Central Market. I got one of the traditional Remorque tuk-tuks (a petrol-powered motorcycle towing a carriage) rather than the more contemporary Indian-made versions now popular, which are gas-powered and sometimes referred to as PassApp. The latter are now the rage with the locals while foreigners prefer the traditional variety. The latter are far more spacious, and riding about in one is one of the pleasures of Cambodia. Nothing else in the area at that time was open and there was nobody around except bus staff and the passengers, most of who had got there before me.  Some were Cambodians and the others Vietnamese. I was the only barang (foreigner or European). In the pale light emanating from Van Rec’s office, I didn’t notice the man in black, who would sit opposite me across the aisle, as he blended into the background. Many were older than me. Some were obviously in couples or in some cases, groups of three or four. They had various types of luggage: hard shell suitcases, bound parcels, while others had items wrapped in black plastic, like bin liners.

Our bus, resplendent in the dark blue to be almost indigo or violet of Van Rec, sat next to us and another parked around the corner. Thankfully, the engine was off otherwise we’d have all been poisoned by diesel fumes by now. There was a line of small coloured plastic chairs for passengers to sit on. So small I had to line up the seat before lowering myself least I miss the target altogether. They gathered and checked passports ready for the machinations at the border. These were then handed back once the bus departed. There were the last-minute toilet visits there being no such facility on this bus. The luggage was loaded and stickered. While we were waiting the manager came out and asked the driver to be polite to the passengers. He responded by loudly clearing his throat and nasal passages and depositing whatever material he was getting rid of in the street. We boarded and left on time slowly making our way down Norodom Boulevard heading for Monivong Boulevard and on to National Route One all the way to Vietnam.

Buses in Cambodia invariably come with at least two staff: the driver and the driver’s assistant. The assistant is usually younger and is likely doing some sort of apprenticeship before becoming a fully-fledged driver. Sometimes the assistant also has an assistant. One time I think I recall one trip where there may have been some three assistants, not sure. So that would make the last in the chain of command the driver’s assistant’s assistant’s assistant. The driver solely does driving, and the assistant, or assistants, does the running about. Their role is passports. Processing passengers getting on and off in between the main stops: beginning and end. They deal with their luggage and immigration at border crossings. Some buses perform sizeable freight functions. I’ve been on buses to Cambodia from Vietnam that were mainly carrying freight and very few passengers.

I don’t enjoy bus travel. The movement of a bus up and down is uncomfortable. You cannot get up and move about unlike on a train or a plane. I once spent three days on a bus, the same bus, on a single journey. The scheduled trip was so long that the fact it arrived at the destination 11 hours late barely mattered. I’ve done dozens of bus trips on my travels. These days, whatever the travel form, I find about 3-4 hours to be my limit. I don’t travel well. After that I’m done and just want to get off, or get out. Buses in Cambodia have improved much in recent years. You see far fewer terminally ill vehicles now.

Cambodia though is where Korean vehicles come to die but these days though when they arrive in the country, they’re in much better shape and don’t look like they’re about to expire at any moment. The tires all have good tread. They can look dated, as some foreigners comment on (what were they expecting exactly?) but most functions on board still work. Some still have their Korean markings and lettering. One I saw announced proudly that the vehicle’s driver had been voted the best in 2024 but in another country. There are always squeaks and rattles. Sometimes you can hear the driveshaft whirring, a sign of age. I find that most drivers are often not in the right gear; usually it’s too high for the speed of the vehicle. You can tell this by listening to the sound of the engine as it struggles along, almost chugging or struggling for breath. They almost never use the gears to slow the vehicle down. Rather they always just use the brakes which must add greatly to wear and tear.

In the dark our driver turned on all the internal lights on the bus. The seating configuration I discovered is the one more commonly found these days on full size buses: two seats abreast on one side and one on the other, all the way to the back where there were four seats. Self-styled limousine buses have two aisles with seats either side (seat-aisle-seat-aisle-seat). There was a television up front and central though this thankfully stayed off. In days of old this would have featured a film usually some Hong Kong chop flick played at excruciating volume, or Khmer karaoke, or some local soap opera. But one merciful consequence of smart phones is they don’t bother anymore. So rather than the bus operator assaulting everyone’s ears, individual passengers do this with their hand-held devices, or even the driver himself. Then there’s the use of mobile phones. Once upon a time the only sound on buses was chatter, the sound of the vehicle’s engine and rubber on the road, and the occasional scrunching of plastic food wrappers. Now there’s mobile phones. Here in Southeast Asia, you are aurally assaulted by whatever others are listening to. Headphones seem a thing of the past for many largely since manufactures started making these optional extras you also need to pay for. The result is that people don’t bother with the expense so just listen on loudspeaker.

Travel time is lengthened further if there’s fiddly processes like border crossings. Between Cambodia and Vietnam there are in fact, two border processes to contend with, one on each side. This roughly follows a certain pattern but can come with variations. You alight on the Cambodian side. The bus driver’s assistant takes everyone’s passports through immigration while you hang about. After you’ve left Cambodia, you get back on the bus and drive to the Vietnam side. Everyone gets off the bus again with their luggage, which must be carried up the steps to the building’s entrance. The bus driver’s assistant stands next to an immigration booth where a Vietnamese official works through the pile of passports handing each one back to the bus driver’s assistant when done. These will come in no particular order and the first in line may get theirs last. He then calls out the name of the holder who steps forward, luggage in hand to collect their travel document and proceed to customs where all luggage passes through electronic screening, like in an airport. If you don’t pass all bags through as required an unseen Vietnamese official who’s monitoring what the x-rays are revealing will call you out. It’s funny because most people don’t realise he’s there and think they can wander through as they please. Then it’s down the steps at the other end of the building where you need present your passport to more officials sitting at a desk next to where your bus is parked. Then you load all the gear back on the bus and retake your seats and there you are, in Vietnam.

At some point in Cambodia between Neak Loeung and Bavet on the road through Svay Reing township and province of the same name, there was a rather surreal moment. The man in black from head to toe sat in the single seat opposite me but slightly behind me so I had to turn to see him. As I was sitting there watching the countryside roll by when there was the unmistakable opening bars and lyrics to the Percy Sledge classic ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’ fired off into the bus interior cutting across all the other noise: When a man loves a woman can't keep his mind on nothin' else …When I turned to look where all this was coming from, he seemed to be staring right at me from behind his sunglasses with a broad smile. He reached into his pocket to remove his phone and to gaze into the screen. I had to smile myself. Usually, I find the aural assault from mobile phones registering from nauseating to irritating, but I had to chuckle about this. It seemed unreal.

The song was composed by a duo: Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright. Sledge recorded it in 1966 at Norala Sound Studio in Sheffield Alabama, better known as Muscle Shoals. Supposedly the inspiration for the song came when Sledge’s girlfriend left him for a modelling career after he was laid off from a construction job in late 1965. According to one version of events, the song was first recorded by Percy Sledge at FAME Studios run by Rick Hall in Muscle Shoals and then re-recorded down the road at Norala. The song went to number one in the US, (becoming the first number one hit recorded in Muscle Shoals), has been covered many times, and is listed in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Sledge, a soul and gospel singer, got into singing while working as a hospital orderly, after auditioning for songwriter, disc jockey, and record producer Quin Ivy, who’d been a former patient at the hospital where Sledge worked. Sledge was from Alabama, and Ivy from Mississippi, both from impoverished backgrounds. Listening to the song while traversing a landscape where land-use has largely remained unchanged for centuries, where many of the those working the land are also impoverished and despite increasingly mechanization, much of the work is labour-intensive still, albeit a world away from the backgrounds of those responsible for this soul classic. From the delta of Mississippi River to the that of the Mekong, two of the world’s great rivers.

Percy Sledge became a firm concert favourite later in his career, especially in Europe and in Africa. He was particularly popular in apartheid-era South Africa where he’d perform 100 times a year, so had no qualms about that then. I’m not sure if he did concerts in Asia or ever made it to Cambodia. When Sledge was making his name with his most famous hit song, Cambodia was thriving as a prolific music hot bed inspired with rock and pop influences from records imported into the country from Latin America, Europe, and the United States. One artist, Sinn Sisamouth (pronounced like “Sisamoot”), known as the King of Khmer Music, was confirmed as having written over 1000 songs. Known as Khmer rock, music then in Cambodia blended Western music influences such as rock and roll, psychedelia, and Latin rhythms with traditional Khmer melodic structures and lyrics in the Khmer language.  Many cover versions were done of Western songs particularly those heard from US Armed Forces radio across the border from Svay Rieng in Vietnam.

I haven’t come across a Khmer version of Sledge’s classic but there’s probably one out there. But to give you an idea of the music and what you can listen to on the bus travelling in Cambodia and Vietnam check out the cover version of Dutch band Shocking Blue’s Venus featuring the wonderful Ros Serey Sothea and Sinn Sisamouth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdN9SVZ9oj8

Traffic generally doesn’t move any faster today than when I made my first trip along this route almost 20 years ago. The road from Phnom Penh goes through the provinces of Kandal, Prey Veng, and Svey Rieng. The latter is one of the country’s smallest provinces by area. It juts out into Vietnam somewhat, its shape giving it the nickname of the “Parrot’s Beak” and with the country’s busiest national road running through the middle of it. The road is still only two lanes all the way along the route. Lines of traffic are often on the road. There’s nowhere to overtake unless you just pull out and do so, which drivers do even when there’s no room to do so and vehicles are coming head-on. Then there’s all the local traffic and roadside furniture to contend with. Buses make multiple stops for comfort, food and to pick—up and drop-off passengers. When combined all these factors means that the average speed for even the fastest trip between the two cities is a mere 37kph for a six-hour trip, and 32kph for a seven-hour trip. If you look at the slowest journey I made on this route of 11 hours or so, it means that the average speed was 20.5kph!

The fastest travel time taken between Phnom Penh and Saigon is unlikely to be broken anytime soon. The showpiece infrastructure of the Tsubasa Bridge at the river crossing of Neak Leoung intended to remove the bottleneck of the ferry crossing has created its own bottleneck. The bridge is just two lanes, one in each direction. Travel is slow as trucks struggle up the bridge incline. Traffic once banked up to await the next ferry, is now stuck nose-to-tail on the bridge approaches. For reasons best known to road designers, speed bumps have been placed at both ends of the bridge which causes even four-wheel drives to reduce to a crawl. Then there’s the sightseers parked in the motorbike lanes who have turned the bridge into a tourist attraction. Some vehicles crossing the bridge are forced into evasive action to avoid those overtaking coming the other way. After the border we set out leisurely pace through a countryside largely built-up all the way to Saigon.

Cambodian border officials look like they’re being officious as part of an opera. They do a good uniform do the Cambodians I have to say, better than their cross-border counterparts. Vietnamese officials meanwhile look steely-faced, completely devoid of human emotion, and look likely to have unfortunates summarily shot. The Cambodians I always think, look like they’re about to burst into smile. Once at a Cambodian international airport, the immigration officer asked if I had a wife. I did not then and said so. He replied asking if I wanted one, and laughed! While, Vietnam studiously x-rays every single item of luggage coming in, the Cambodians by comparison don’t check a one, nothing. If you want to see corruption in action, watching Vietnamese immigration officials at Moc Bai is the place to be. I once stood there for two hours while they processed, for cash, passports of Vietnamese nationals while busloads of tourists were kept waiting. They only began processing the foreign passports when there were so many buses outside there was no room left to park and so many passengers waiting to enter the country that the immigration hall was full to overflowing.

Van Rec drops passengers off at their depot, an unpaved park accessible down a narrow drive the driver has to negotiate entrance with a three point turn to avoid hitting obstacles or other vehicles. The depot was about 3-4kms from where I was wanting to go in Saigon, so I hailed a taxi. Metered taxis exist in abundance in Saigon, little green things. There are also moto riders. Taxis haven’t caught on in Cambodia yet and probably don’t need to though there’s no the ride app options with tuk-tuk, and cars. Meanwhile in Cambodia motos seem to have all but disappeared with the emergence of cheap PassApp tuk-tuks plying the streets in their hundreds imported from India. Pity jumping on the back of a motorcycle to wheel off through the streets was one of the pleasures of transport in Cambodia’s capital.

My return journey was with Danh & Danh. Tickets can be bought from their office on Pham Ngu Lao in Saigon’s District One. The journey out of the city takes an hour as the driver slowly weaves his way through Saigon’s traffic and extended suburbs. Entry back inot Cambodia is faster than entering Vietnam coming the other way. Their office in Phnom Penh is on Mao Tse Tung Boulevard, a fairly central location. There are always tuk-tuks waiting to take you wherever you want. It was a long trip back; all up eight-and-a-half hours. There were no surreal musical experiences on the return trip. Unfortunately, much of it was spoiled by a young woman in front of me who played her phone loudly the whole trip some of it listening to some kind of cartoon with a soundtrack that sounded like complete gibberish played at speed.

Here's a contemporary Khmer cover version of Percy’s most famous song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-UnxNkWSqM