Michael Batson

I recently took a bus from Phnom Penh to the provincial town of Kratie or Krong Kracheh, northeast of the Cambodian capital on the banks of the Mekong River, a journey of about 250kms by road. Cambodia is one of the few countries I’ve travelled in where road travel is often easier, faster, and more comfortable on dirt roads than on sealed ones. I’ve seen roads in Cambodia so riddled with potholes the constant jarring gave me a headache, where there seems nothing left of the original road surface, or roads broken and some patch-repaired so many times they resemble the moonscape. By the route I took, about half the road to Kratie needed resurfacing or basic construction, so I would not advise travelling with anything fragile, as it might not survive the journey. I bought a ticket from the bus station near the Central Market (Phsar Thmei). It opened in 1937 and was once the biggest market in Southeast Asia and is an architectural wonder. Previously a hive of activity the bus station now seems quiet; the line of ticket booths reduced to two women seated at a desk looking at their phones, selling tickets to buses that mainly leave from elsewhere. I am glad to have done much of my travelling before the advent of mobile phones, back when people still spoke to each other and you were not aurally assaulted by whatever bite-size snippet captures people’s attention on hand-held devices. The latest insult is people listening without the headphones provided, so you can wind up