Bayon VIP Bus from Battambang to Phnom Penh

Battambang Bus to Phnom Penh

Feature Image: The Bayon bus station in Battambang

How an overweight knight came to my rescue for our 5 hour van ride, and how we got lost looking for our hotel.

Leaving Battambang

The Bayon VIP 15-seater bus takes 5 hours to get from Battambang to Phnom Penh, with a short 20 minute meal break at the mid-way point. I booked my ticket online and it allowed me to pick our seats, so I chose the front two seats next to the driver.

Battambang Cambodia
View from our hotel room in Battambang

Our last morning in Battambang was a moody one. The sky cast a grey blanket over the town, and the streets were muddy and full of puddles. On one hand I was glad that we weren’t wasting a sunny day stuck in a van, on the other hand I was worried about being in a van in the teeming rain on slippery highways with an unknown driver.

I’d research the safety records of the different van companies, and Bayon looked like the least hazardous of the options. This was our first Cambodian bus trip, and it was going to be the first of many, so I was intrigued to find out how this first one would establish our enthusiasm for boarding the next one.

Switching Seats

When we got to the bus departure point (just north of the Central Market) the lady at the ticket desk asked us if we wanted to move seats. I thought this was an odd questions, so I declined.

30 minutes later when we were about to board, we discovered that the middle seat I’d booked was little more than a half the width of a normal seat, right in front of the gear stick. This meant I was due to spend the next five hours squashed between Red and the driver, with the driver sticking his hand between my legs each time he needed to change gear.

We kicked up a stink, but by this time the bus was fully booked and they weren’t able to offer us a different seat.

Luckily there was a rather large American passenger, in his mid-60s, who had booked two seats in the back of the bus, and he was willing to switch with us because all he really needed was a seat and a half for his ample posterior.

I was so grateful to this knight in shining armor. He could have been a stickler about his two seats, but he saw a damsel in distress — I was actually close to tears.

I wanted to hug him to say thanks, but it was humid and he was sweating profusely, and I didn’t want to spend the next five hours smelling of somebody else’s body odour. But my gratitude was dripping from my face, and he could see how happy he’d made me.

One Rest Stop

As soon as we got to our one and only rest stop, we rushed out of the van and over to my savior to buy his drinks and food, but he had a picnic and drinks packed, so we joined him at a table for a chat about his adventures.

Battambang Bus to Phnom Penh
Rest stop for the Bayon VIP Bus from Battambang to Phnom Penh

Although the building was like a cavernous warehouse, the mahogany tables and chairs added an aura of quality and class to this pit stop. We checked out the food, but decided that none of it looked appealing enough, and we really weren’t that hungry after all.

Battambang Bus to Phnom Penh
Rest stop for the Bayon VIP Bus from Battambang to Phnom Penh

Anyone who says you don’t eat with your eyes first, is kidding themselves. I’ve discovered that if what I’m looking at doesn’t look appealing, then I’m not so open to trying it. But if it looks good, I’ll give it a go – even if I’m not quite sure what it is or what it tastes like.

As this was going to be our own stop, we both headed to the toilets, and if I’d been hungry before I visited to loo, I definitely wasn’t hungry after I’d been.

Arriving in Phnom Penh

It rained nearly the entire way to Phnon Pehn, and took a little bit longer than 5 hours, because of the weather. Our VIP van looked well worn and muddy by the end of the trip.

Battambang Bus to Phnom Penh
Our Bayon Vip van

It wasn’t the most comfortable or relaxing ride – but I was just grateful to have a full seat to myself! I would use this company again, but I won’t book the front seat next time.

Getting Lost Looking for our Hotel

As we’d been cooped up in the van for so long, we decided a walk would do us good. Based on the map it looked like it was easy to walk to our accommodation, and it had stopped raining by the time we got off the bus, but it was hot, sticky, and humid. In my estimation it should have taken about 10-15 minutes to walk there, but after 30 minutes of walking around in circles we found ourselves on a street corner, sweating, annoyed, and arguing with each other.

The syringes on the floor snapped us into the present, and the dead-eyed locals propping up the nearby buildings made us realize we needed to get out of the area. We hailed a remork (a Cambodian equivalent of a tuk-tuk), and negotiated a $2 fare to go to the Hometown Suite Hotel. He drove round in circles and took us round a series of one way streets, further and further away from where I knew the hotel was.

Hometown Suite Hotel
Hometown Suite Hotel Phnom Penh

By this time we were well and truly pissed off, with each other, and the remork driver. I used the map and navigator on my phone and we finally drove up the right street and found our hotel, which was literally less than a km from where the bus had dropped us off. But this distance had taken us nearly an hour to find. Why?

Turns out the streets have multiple different names, and the ones displayed on Google Maps don’t always match up with the actual street signs. So rather than trusting the GPS icons and just heading to where the icon was placed on the map (which hadn’t been that accurate in Siem Reap), I decided to go off street names and thought we’d been on the wrong street, and spent too long looking for the right street name which remained elusive.

By the time we got in the remork, it seemed like the driver was just as confused by the street names. So when we realized that he had no idea where he was going, I abandoned street names altogether, and just relied on the GPS locator instead.

Ah! the joys of getting lost in a new city. Doesn’t this always happen when you’re tired, hot, and hungry—and your backpack is making you sweat profusely, and your feet have started to swell and the seam in your sock is rubbing on your little toe! A perfect storm.

 

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Flashpacking through Cambodia ebook cover for Baby Boomers on a Budget
Flashpacking through Cambodia

Flashpacking through Cambodia: For Baby Boomers on a Budget is my latest Roving Jay travel guide full of travel tips, advice, and sample itineraries for flash packers who want the back packing experience without foregoing some of life’s creature comforts – like a comfortable bed, a hot shower, free wi-fi, and somewhere to plug your electric toothbrush in.

I spent almost three months backpacking around Cambodia in 2017/2018 to research this travel guide, and I share insights and first hand knowledge of tourist traps and off-the-beaten-path discoveries. We ate street food, drank 50c beers, and travelled by train, bus, minivan and tuktuk to identify the best ways to get from A to B.

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Author: Roving Jay

Jay is a project manager who swapped corporate life for a nomadic existence as a travel writer. She works with authors and entrepreneurs to help them achieve their self-publishing goals and reach their target audience through content marketing. Jay has published a series of travel guides, a travel memoir, and nonfiction books about travel writing. She housesits and volunteers around the globe with her husband, a Hollywood set painter, and she’s never more that 10 paces away from a wi-fi connection.

10 thoughts on “Bayon VIP Bus from Battambang to Phnom Penh

  1. This all sounds so familiar! If only we could reclaim all the hours spent being lost just metres from our destination when we first arrive anywhere. What a relief about the man who was willing to swap seats too – lots of luck that he had booked 2 seats. I miss travel right now but definitely not those in transit toilets 😉

    1. Those transit toilets were awful, and they seemed to only get worse the longer we traveled and the more bus trips we took. Or maybe my tolerance just started to wear off! But when you’ve got to go, you’ve gotta go.

  2. What an adventure! And yes, I can relate, to both a scary bus ride with tiny seats across two countries and getting lost, walking around in circles in a new environment… I actually feel like I don’t truly know a place until I get lost in it at least once – not always fun, especially if it’s hot and humid, and you’re tired and miserable, but part of the life of a traveler. Thanks for sharing your adventure.

    1. Yes it’s all part of the travel experience. I don’t mind getting lost, when it’s on purpose. But when it’s time for a cold shower and a comfy bed, I’d rather not get lost!

  3. A driver changing gears between your thighs or the body odour scent of a sweaty knight…such are some of the choices one needs to make in life. Jay you have such a beautifully creative and humorous writing style. Phnom Penhs’ dark past has such a shady side and the syringes on the floor would be enough to snap anyone into reality. Yet somewhere in the midst of a dark unknown, that followed a five hour dusty and sweaty ride in a minivan, becomes a memorable ‘perfect storm’.

    1. The joy of travel! If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. 🙂 There are always struggles or dilemmas to face when you’re doing budget travel, but I feel like that is just part of the adventure. And I love sharing the highs and lows of travel. Too many bloggers only write about the good times, but that’s just not a realistic representation of what long term travel is like.

  4. Well, that sounds like quite an ordeal. It was kind of the woman at the ticket counter to offer to let you switch seats. Too bad she didn’t explain why she was offering. I’m glad the kind man switched with you. What an awkward situation that would have been in so many ways. 🙂 Thanks for sharing your ups and downs of travel.

    1. It’s all just part of travel isn’t it? These small little incidents that can make or break a journey. The kindness of strangers goes a long way, and is a good travel ethos to pay forward.

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