…We awoke from our beautiful slumber in Downtown Bangkok where we stayed at the Dream Hotel and promptly went to gorge ourselves on the breakfast buffet. We decided while licking bacon grease from our fingertips and drinking fresh squeezed pineapple juice that we wanted to try traveling through the Thai countryside the way the local Thai people do. There are many travel agencies here that will help you get from point A to point B but you usually end up paying twice as much and you only get to see the touristy stuff. We wanted a more authentic feel. We decided to catch the 3rd class train to the border town Aranyaprathet. The train ride from Bangkok to the border town was supposed to have a couple of departure times but as we soon discovered, our Lonely Planet guide was ill equipped to help us travel through Thailand like the locals do. It was more equipped to help you find the touristy areas and had an underlying assumption throughout the book that you were willing to spend massive amounts of money. We should have purchased the Thailand on a shoestring Lonely Planet guide instead. It caters more to backpackers who are trying to travel all over Thailand and not just fly to a touristy place. Anyway point of the story is we missed the train. This turned out to be a good thing as we later discovered that that particular train while cheap at 48 bhat ($1.50) is a long tedious hot ride with no AC on hard wooden benches crammed full of people with little ventilation.
Instead we headed to Victory Monument which is a giant 5 lane round-about with several buses all converging and then departing to various destinations. We had heard you could catch the government bus here to Aranyaprathet. When we arrived it was a mass of people walking every which way and all the signs were written in Thai. We had no idea where to go so we started walking around looking for any type of sign that would direct us to a government bus station. After 20 minutes we gave up and asked a passerby who pointed at a table set up near a curbed section of the round-about. This table was not official looking. It was a simple card table propped up with paper tickets written in Thai. We told the lady behind the table where we wanted to go (everybody speaks English here) and she handed us two tickets for a price of 220 bhat ($7) each. She motioned for us to wait and then 10 minutes later shuttled us into an air conditioned mini van. We were very confused. This was a mini van not a bus and our tickets were written in Thai so we had no idea where we’d just paid to go. The mini van started moving in what seemed to be the right direction so we just decided to go with it and embrace the adventure. About 4 hours later the mini van dropped us off in Aranyaprathet. Success!!
We got a tuk tuk to the actual border which was still about 6 Kilometers away and were dropped off at a very official looking stand with men in uniforms. We’d heard about several border scams and were not fooled in the slightest. We kept right on walking towards the border. You see there are some not so nice people that tell you that you need to pay for your Thai visa before you can cross the border into Cambodia. This is not true. They will charge you ridiculous amounts of money and because they are dressed in a uniform and your tuk tuk driver dropped you off at their office many tourists give them money unknowingly. You get a visa when you arrive in Thailand. If you arrive by plane it’s for 30 days and if you cross through a land border its 15 days. It’s free. When you leave Thailand they stamp you out and then you continue walking and arrive at the Cambodian visa office. Cambodian visas you do have to pay for and they are 20 dollars.
Once we got through the border crossing confusion we found ourselves in Poipet where we were ushered into an even more confusing situation. A young man motioned for us to get on a bus. We said no thank you and kept walking. He insisted that it is illegal to take a cab from Poipet and we must get on the bus which would take us into the next town where we could catch the government bus to Siem Reap. This sounded suspicious. We kept walking. As soon as we stepped onto the street we were bombarded by at least 6 taxi drivers all asking where we wanted to go and that they would take us there for 50 dollars (nobody uses the local Cambodian currency here. Everyone uses dollars at 4,100 riels to $1 I can see why). Fifty bucks for a cab ride sounded ridiculous to me but it was a long 150Ks drive to Siem Reap so maybe that was right…? We kept walking. The taxi drivers followed us. We kept walking and they kept following. Finally after walking quite a ways there was one driver who wouldn’t leave us alone. We knew we needed a taxi but this driver was way too aggressive and annoying that on principal we wanted a different one. He went so far as to pull his taxi up in front of the side walk where we were walking to prevent us from continuing.
Then it started raining…
and the taxi driver kept following…
and Christian got cranky…
then Julie got cranky…
and the taxi driver kept following…
We had met two wonderful British nationals named Mick and Suwon while crossing the border but in the mêlée of taxi drivers we had lost them. They were also on their way to Siem Reap so we had thought it would be a good idea to stick together. Through the rain ahead of us we finally spotted them. They had gotten on the government bus which drove them to the next city (yes, we walked 1K to escape the taxi driver and he followed us the whole way!). I guess after arriving the government bus demanded that the passengers tip them for driving them to the next city (1K is really far). They also discovered that taxis were more expensive there because of some taxi cartel they have. They were given the option of catching the overcrowded bus for 8 dollars which took 3-5 hours and made mandatory tourist stops at shops and restaurants where you are encouraged to buy souvenirs. It was at this point that they decided to turn around and walk back to the border to find a taxi and conveniently us too. With the four of us now walking back to the border drenched and in serious need of a dry taxi we were ready to bargain for our taxi fare. Suwon speaks Thai and is a shrewd negotiator. She was able to get us a taxi for 26 dollars which when split four ways is a much nicer way to travel. Plus the taxi got us there in 2 hours. Ha!! Success again!! Although by this point we were too tired to care about success and just wanted to crawl into bed.
We had arrived!!!
Hopefully pictures to follow… if Blogger isn’t a poo-head.
Wow, that's kinda frustrating that there are so many people trying to cheat you. I'm glad you guys weren't fooled. And I hope you can figure out what to do about the picture stuff.
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