21 Hour Travel Days are my FAVOURITE

After we'd reached our quota for temple-viewing in Siem Reap, we decided to go for it and book a bus back to lovely Thailand!! Our chosen departure time - 3 am. Awesome. Attempting to tuck in 'early' before our super early morning, we packed up , had our last showers before the marathon trip, and headed to bed for pretty much a nap before we left. 2am wake-up call came way too early... we rolled out of bed and grabbed our things, heading out to our tuk-tuk to take us to the bus. Ashort 15 second ride later (easliy could've walked) we arrived at the waiting bus - boarding it, we realized that something.... something wasn't right... It smelt DIAPERS. More than one. We joined people on the bus who had come all the way from Pnom Penh and discovered that indeed there had a baby who had an incident on the bus, and the clean-up was neglected.. thank god it was only 2.5 hours to the the Cambodia - Thai border and not the 4 hours they had told us... but wait!! Don't get off the bus yet!! Let us back in, shut of the engine and lights, and lock the doors without telling you what's going on.... just relax in there with the lovely aroma. NO thanks... I went down to try to open the doors and find someone to see what was going on... Sarah came down with her headlamp and we managed to slide open one of the windows and yell at someone. He ignored us, but we managed to wake up the driver who was secretly sleeping below the bus!! He woke up and groggily told us we were staying on the bus until 7 then going to the border. Alright - hour and a half to nap on the diaper bus!! When 7 finally rolled around, we were told to get off the smelly bus and move two busses forwards to drive to the border. Everyone was STOKED - this bus was great, super A/C, no diaper smell, not muggy and nasty.. too bad the drive to the border was about 800m. WHAT - get off the bus again? OK this is understandable because a) the Cambodians drive on the right side of the road and Thais drive on the left, and b) we needed to get through the border and do our new Thai visas. But seriously could've walked from where we slept on the nasty bus to the border. Its fine. Sarah and I grabbed our bags and walked to join the lineup at Cambodia departures. This border crossing was a breeze compared to the last - we did have to get our fingerprints scanned while leaving Cambodia though! Cool! After succesfully crossing back into Thailand, we had to wait for the rest of the passengers from our bus.. waited for about an hour probably. Then our group was led to some minibuses (glorified minivans) by a little shop, and told we had ANOTHER half hour to 'chill and wait' NO i just want to go to Bangkok. Haha good thing we ended up buying some cheese crackers to tide us over though... it was longer than expected. Minibuses - are essentially minivans with seats for 15 people and a driver (I KNOW) but they always seem to forget that people usually travel with luggage... needless to say, the ride to Bangkok in the minivan was HOT and we (well I) was getting irritable, especially when we stopped every HOUR on the way to Bangkok like NO i have been dehydrating myslef so I don't have to pee on this bus ride... 280kms from the border to Bangkok took us roughle 4.5 hours. Yikes. Arriving in Bangkok at around 2pm (12 hours so far!) we hit UP the nearest restaurant for some real food.... we got some Thai food accompanied by Thai iced teas (THE BEST) AND WERE so EXCITED about our meals! Finally! After we enjoyed our lunch, we made the journey into seriously FANCY and upscale downtonw Bangkok, we felt sooo out of place with our giant backpacks and dirtiness. We had to go to the New Zealand Embassy (for me) to try to deal with my still ongoing student Visa application... just so happened it was wednesday. When does the embassy close on Wednesdays? 2pm? oooh that's UNFORTUNATE. Seriously WHY. (Not to worry - its been sorted out). After chatting with numerous people and figuring out I had best just do it when i get back to Bangkok, we indulged in some STARBUCKS OH MAN in the lobby of the td-square-esque office building!! So rich and way more expensive than we are used to... it WAS delicious though. We then grabbed a cab to the airport to catch our flight down to Phuket! Waiting for a few hours and grabbing some dinner at the airport, we boarded our plance for TROPICALNESS at 730pm. Flawless flight! So easy! I read my book 'First They Killed My Father' that I bought in Cambodia (about the Khmer Rouge and genocide) and Sarah caught some zzz's. Touchdown at 9pm, we collected our luggage and ended up avoiding the 1000B taxi into town scam but catching a 100B bus (SCORE) BUT it ended up stopping somehwere, dropping all passengers off at their respective hotels, of which ours was the last. Obviously. Finally in our room, setting down our bags and passing out at 11pm FINISHED our 21 hours travel day. What was the plan for the next day? Hmmm I think there's a beach near by...