saltwatersteve.com/travel

Today was a looooong day of traveling. Woke up in Bangkok at 4 AM to catch the train to Aranya Prathet on the Cambodian border. The train departed at 5:55 AM and took the first of its 6 hours of voyage just getting out of the Bangkok area. The ride was nice and scenic - there would be miles after miles of rice paddies and then a small shanty village but nearby there would be a gleaming beautiful temple, always clean and shiny.

Eventually we got to the border town around noon and immediately met another backpacker from Belgium named Tom. The three of us were hungry and decided to grab some grub before setting off for the border crossing. Some stir-fried greasy noodles and cokes fit the bill for $1.00 per person at the cafe next to the train station. We then took a tuk-tuk (motorcycle-like 3-wheeled vehicle - strangely, having a stickshift transmission - with a carriage on the back for the passengers) to the border.

On the way, we stopped at a place where a guy came out to try to get us to arrange Cambodian visas but this seemed like a scam since our books said we could get visas at the border on-the-spot so we told him we already had them and motioned our tuk-tuk driver to go on. At Thai immigration there were several signs that seemed to indicate that we did indeed need Cambodian visas because “on-the-spot” was no longer available for “the Kingdom”. We weren’t sure which kingdom it was referring to however, Thailand or Cambodia, so we pressed on. Some Aussie girls mentioned that they did stop at the place earlier and paid 1200 Baht (about US $38) for the visas.

Got our exit stamps from the Thai officials, and found out from a border guard that we can just get our visas on-the-spot like we thought just go ahead into Cambodia and it’s on our right hadn side. So we said “Kawp kohn khrap!” and walked into the dusty streets of Cambodia. It was pretty amazing. Someone is building these elaborate casinos right on the border even though Poipet has very little else going for it (to put it nicely). We got our visas right where the guard said they were and they cost us 1000 Baht per person. Very short wait for them to be processed, then we were on our way to immigrations. Long, slow line there and when the 3 of us got to the front we realized we had skipped filling out the landing forms. No problem, Tom went and found some and we were through and on our way.

We then took a free bus from near immigrations to the “tourist lounge” where we paid US $50 to take an air-con Toyota Camry the 3 hour journey into Siem Reap. We thought the hard part was over. The adventure was just beginning.

Imagine the worst road you’ve ever been on. Make sure it’s a dirt road. Now add speed bumps that are literally the height of cars. Motocross jumps are about the same size, just sharper at the top. Now add big potholes and swerving detours every 1/4 mile or so. Now add about a bunch of traffic, traveling on bicycles, motor scooters, trucks laden down with waaaay too much stuff, and wagons drawn behind these weird things resembling large roto-tillers (without the tiller part). Now drive down this road at about 60 mph. Insane. There is a sidenote in the Lonely Planet book that Cambodian officials have been paid off by a Thai airline (that flies Bangkok-Siem Reap) not to fix /finish this road. During the 3 hour trip, we stopped once to fill up with gas, but 3 times to check the tire air pressure!

This was such a rough ride that writing in my journal was impossible unless I wanted to write about 1 word per page, and reading was really hard to do as well. Just had to watch the scenery and listen to Khmer drum and bass music. This road is so dusty that the people on motor scooters had their heads wrapped up like ninjas; when we did pass a tree or other vegetation, it was brown instead of green.

We finally got into Siem Reap and took the first guesthouse that had room. A nice place with free internet access called “Green Town”. We went to eat some Khmer curry at the oldest restaurant in town for about $8 for both of us. Very tasty indeed. They definitely went easy on us with the chilies compared to the Thai we had that first lunch in Bangkok.

Went back to the hotel and crashed.