Cambodian roadside attraction.
Where to start?
We stopped along the route to allow everyone a lunch/bathroom break.
It’s impossible to describe the scene, but here’re a few details.
Trash everywhere. A couple cows eating at it. A covered restaurant thing with no walls, intrenched in bus exhaust. Went around back to the dried-out pool to find the bathroom. Waited my turn. Went inside.
It was a square room with a giant pool, about 3 feet deep taking up the far half of the 6′ x 6′ room. The pool of water clearly ran between both “bathrooms”. There was a pail balanced on the edge of the pool. The idea is to do one’s business then use the pail to scoop up some water from this massive pool and wash it away; only there’s no drain in the dead-flat, cement floor, just a small hole in the corner and a small opening to the adjoining room. So I’m using the facilities when the person next to me apparently finishes and decides to “flush”. Ahem. So, here comes this river of disgustingness, straight at my shoes! I was slow, too slow to move, but there wasn’t much room anyway. So there I am standing in a swirling, flat lake of someone’s unpleasantness. After I left, a white girl walked in and just stared; she couldn’t figure out what to do and just walked away after a few moments of contemplation.
So, I head over to the bus-fumed eating area. A lady is making meat sandwiches, taking money and using her hands to do it all on a counter that hadn’t seen a cleaning cloth in ages. Same with the lady cutting fresh fruit one stand over. There seemed to be dirt/dust on everything. I give it a hyginic ratin of 2/10. Street food is my favorite thing in the SE Asian countries I’ve visited, but this was a whole different level!

At the end of my stay, the sandwich lady grabs a meat clever and starts mauling a coconut. When she’s done cutting through the thick, fibrous outside and making a hole to the inside, she grabs a plastic bag and flips the coconut up-side down into the little baggie. She handed it to the mom of the child who had been screaming. The mom tied the bag, tossed a straw in it and that was that! Tons of things are served in plastic bags. There’s absolutely nothing wrong or even weird about drinking from a plastic bag, but it sure looks funny at first.

I’m back in the bus. The driver turned the music back up. I went catatonic earlier and asked him to turn it down before I pulled all my hair out. I give myself about another hour before I’m just a drooling vegetable. It’s Cambodian karaoke. I guess it’s cool to follow along as though you were singing, but you’re not.