I just realized how behind I am on my updates!! Here’s a bit more about Bangkok and our trip to Siem Reap in Cambodia…
After our eventful first night in Bangkok, we spent the following two days doing mainly shopping and exploring the city during the days and the first night we went to a muay thai boxing match, and the second night we went to a drag show called Calypso Cabaret. We found Bangkok pretty difficult to navigate and overall very confusing (not to mention the fact that people were STILL having water fights everywhere), so we ended up taking a lot of taxis and tuk-tuks to get around as opposed to public transportation.
Shopping in Bangkok was interesting as pretty much everything is “free size” or “one size fits all,” meaning that there is elastic involved, therefore making it miraculously fit ALL bodies! And by “all bodies,” I mean “ten percent of bodies,” and I’m not always in that ten percent. I’m a giant in this land, so I had kind of a tough time. But I still managed to drop some baht on a few new duds. The highlight of the weekend was the Chatuchak weekend market, where you can buy anything from live animals to bedding to soup to crafts. It’s a huge open-air market and needless to say, Dylan and I split up so that I could spend the day trolling through every clothing and jewelry stall in the place.
After Bangkok, we took a charter bus to the border city called Aryanprathet which was about five hours. That went smoothly except for the fact that when the man came around to check our tickets and rip half of the perforated ticket off, Dylan said he didn’t have the tickets because he had given both our tickets to the woman who seated us when we got on the bus originally. We don’t know who this woman was, but she took our tickets and showed us to our seats and then we thought she stayed on the bus, but she seemed to have disappeared. We assume this could have been a scam, but it’s not uncommon to have people on busses working almost like a flight attendant would on a plane, so we just assumed that’s what she was.
So the first man who came around to check tickets didn’t speak much English but seemed satisfied with our frantic gesturing, telling him that we stupidly gave our tickets to the woman we saw when we got on the bus. It created a bit of a scene but he seemed to either understand or not care. He also said something to the driver, whom we DID show our tickets to prior to giving them away. However, at one of the last stops before the border, a woman came on asking for ticket stubs from everyone to prove that we bought tickets already. Thankfully, an angel from heaven in the form of a young woman who could speak enough English to translate helped us. We told the ticket-checking woman through this other interpreter what had happened. We caused a bit of a scene, with the two women, the bus driver, and the male ticket-taker all yelling through the bus in Khmer or Thai (not sure which). We told the woman that we would buy another ticket if we had to (each ticket was only about $4), but that we had already purchased them and “lost” them, or whatever you would call it. I guess the situation was resolved when the bus driver vouched for us and said that he remembered us having tickets at some point, and that was the end of that. The ticket-taking lady seemed a bit pissed though. I’m not gonna lie, there were moments there when I was pretty sure we were headed to a Cambodian slammer for this misunderstanding.
Once we got off the bus, more adventure ensued.
We had read on various travel sites about how tough it can be for foreigners to get through the border at Poi Pet on foot because of numerous scams. We were pretty pleased with ourselves that we got through relatively unscathed.
From where the bus drops you off, you must take a tuk-tuk to the actual border which takes about 5 minutes. The nice English-speaking woman who helped us on the bus said we could “go with her” to the border, but there is not enough room in a tuk-tuk for four people, so we were in separate vehicles. The first place they took us—rather than the actual border—was a place where men were trying to sell us Cambodian visas. We knew it was a scam—you aren’t supposed to get your visa until later—and an Italian couple we met on the bus had been taken there as well. As the men handed us paperwork to fill out, I recognized the scam and told the Italians that we should get out of there. Thankfully the men didn’t give us any trouble for leaving and we set out on foot for the border.
We crossed through Thailand departure immigration and then we had to get visas (real ones) at the Cambodian tourist office. We had heard that they would try to inflate the visa price from $20 USD to $35, but thankfully they just charged us the equivalent of $23 USD, so we were okay with that. Once everyone had their visa (we had now joined forces with the Italians), we headed for Cambodian immigration. That was pretty painless, and then once we finished immigration we took a free shuttle to the depot where we would get our taxi. I guess the government has a monopoly on taxi services now so foreigners aren’t supposed to haggle with the drivers for lower prices, so the taxi ended up being $60 USD. Split four ways with the Italians it was still only $15 each, which is pretty cheap for a two-hour drive in a private car.
We are currently on the road from Poi Pet to Siem Reap, and we now know why they say “the best thing about Poi Pet is leaving it.” It’s a pretty stinky little border town with shanties galore, beggars and touts everywhere. We didn’t get involved in much there since we basically just were focused on making it through the steps of the border process correctly.
Supposedly this road used to be horrible and would take about five hours to go what our speedy taxi driver will probably do in just under two hours.
Personally I’m really glad that we are traveling to Cambodia this way (we took flights more than bus rides in Thailand) because it is giving us a great opportunity to see more of the countryside and the people who live there. At first glance, and also based on what I’ve heard, this country seems considerably poorer than southern Thailand. Granted, we were only in Bangkok and on a tourist-centric island, but it just didn’t seem to have quite as much poverty.
Much to our dismay, the people here are still celebrating their New Year (the thai new year ended the day before yesterday), so water fights are still going on in the streets as we’re driving by. We had read that you could do the two-hour journey in the back of a truck for cheaper, but we were quite relieved to be in a car when people were soaking the vehicle with water, and also when it started pouring down rain.
