Travel diary #3: The one where I lost my temper with a tuk tuk driver in Phnom Penh

August 4^th, 2016

We spent the entire afternoon at the genocide museum. Almost 3 hours listening to horrible stories 🙁 Then we went back to our Couchsurf host’s place.

We packed our backpacks and off we went downstairs to have a ride to our second host. He didn’t give a detailed address.

Here were his instructions:

Search Vimeas Guesthouse on Google. Pass this guesthouse, turn on the second left then take the first, the house is with a blue gate.

Since we didn’t have a complete address, we wanted to make sure that our driver knew how to get, at least, to the guesthouse.

I think we spent 5min with the first driver we saw. He kept asking me if I knew how to get there as if I were the driver… After 5min, I started to get annoyed and impatient.

Why is he not just saying that he doesn’t know how to get there? Why is he trying to fake?

Luckily, Davidson kept his calm and just said to him:

Look, we don’t know how to get there. If you don’t know it’s ok. We’re gonna find someone else who will get us there.

And 10 meters from there, there was another driver. At least, he had a phone with data. So he just followed the map.

After 30min of ride we arrived.

We agreed with 12$ (at first he wanted to charge 15$). But since we didn’t have small change, we paid 13$ and I’m pretty sure he did it on purpose…

Lessons learned

• Always choose a driver who has a smartphone with data
• Always negotiate
• Always keep small change in your wallet