After 5 entertaining but exhausting days in Bangkok we left Thailand for Cambodia. Neither of us were quite ready to leave, but our visa was only good for 1 month (1 calendar month, which means we got shorted since we went in February. Grrr…) and since we have already overstayed one visa we were not keen on doing it again- the anxiety that comes with exiting a country on an expired visa is too much. So we decided to pack up and move on to Cambodia.
Tuk Tuk to the Border
We paid just under 3 dollars for both of us to take the 6 hour train from Bangkok to the border of Cambodia. We spent the night in the border town of Aranyprathet before crossing the border the next day. We had heard all sorts of horror stories about crossing the border to Cambodia. It seems that every single thing that happens on the border is a scam. We read tons of different travel advice and everyone warned about the multitude of scams going on at the border. So we were exceptionally cautious and held tightly to our belongings as we crossed, ignoring the cries of tuk tuk drivers, or anyone who offered to help us with our visa applications. We had no incidents and though the crossing was confusing, it was not as bad as the Costa Rica to Panama border which I imagine will always take the cake as the weirdest, most difficult border crossing to me!
Walking into Cambodia
Once we had crossed our next stop was a bus station in the middle of nowhere where we split a cab with a couple from Switzerland to Siem Reap. The cab ride was about 2 hours and it was terrifying. Though we were back to driving on the right side of the road there seemed to be few other rules. Cars passed trucks who passed mopeds with only inches to spare on either side and darted headlong into on coming traffic without a single consideration to the on coming traffic. We passed trucks that were filled with cargo to the point that the cargo stacked almost twice as high as the truck itself and often there were people sitting on the top of the cabs of these large trucks or leaning against the precariously stacked cargo. We came to a point where one of the two lanes was closed, and it narrowed down to one lane for both directions of traffic to navigate through but instead of having someone directing traffic to prevent head on collisions, there was nothing. It seemed to be a free for all. Apparently traffic safety is a huge problem as we saw several billboards of happy people on mopeds in the first part of the board and the next part of the board showed twisted mopeds and cars and mangled bodies laying in pools of blood. No joke, these were actual billboards on the side of the highway. No idea what they were advertising, but they were pretty intense.
Anyway, we made it to Siem Reap and got dropped off… somewhere. Our cab driver dropped us off at the first tuk-tuk we saw to take us the rest of the way. We had heard that tuk-tuk drivers are famous for taking you to the wrong place- they tell you your hotel or hostel is closed but they know another one and offer to take you there instead (with a nice commission for them) or they say that they will take you for free if you agree to go to the temples with them the next day at exorbitant prices. Our guest house, well aware of such schemes, said that they would be happy to pick us up for free from wherever we got dropped off, they need us to be at the guesthouse to pay our bill! Unfortunately, we had not written down the phone number and it was nowhere to be found in the email. Not to mention we had no idea where we were! So we decided to ask the tuk-tuk driver how much to get to our guesthouse. He informed us it would be $6! Way too much, so we went into the nearest restaurant, found the guest house phone number and called to get picked up. Finally, we made it and now our Cambodia adventure begins!
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