Thailand to Vietnam – Scambodia

Ok, I think for this entry I need to issue a disclaimer. I do actually quite like travelling and when I spent 2 weeks in Cambodia a couple of years ago, I loved the place. The following rant is the result of travelling too far, too fast. Also please forgive the holocaust gag. 

By the time we hit Cambodia, 6 weeks of constant travel had sent me madder than an octopus's nipple

To get into Cambodia you need to a tourist visa. Fortunately you can buy these at the border for around 20 bucks. Unfortunately this means there are scams. Nowhere in the world attracts crooks and scumbags like a land border – just look at Echuca-Moama.

The particular scam here is a deal between the tuk-tuk drivers at Aranyaprathet train station and a bunch of local berks who have bought some quasi-military uniforms and turned a travel agency near the border into an approximation of an immigration checkpoint. So the only way to get to the border is to get a tuk-tuk – the driver will assure you he is going to the real border but in reality will drop you at the travel agent’s – smile and tell the guy with faux uniform to piss off, then walk 500m to the real border where the real officials are, like all Thais not involved with tourism, polite and helpful.

Considering I had chest infection, had been up since 4.30 and spent 7 hours on a train not unlike one your Jewish grandad would be familiar with, I think I was pretty restrained.

            If you stop to think about it, and if you have crossed a few borders before, you will spot it a mile away. For a start, the only currency you can use at this scam border is Thai Baht… For a Cambodian visa. So unless Cambodia has decided to adopt the national currency of Thailand – unlikely because the two countries are virtually at war – this seems fairly odd. Also our passports hadn’t been stamped out of Thailand yet, so it would seem a little premature to be stamping into Cambodia. Anyway we avoided the scam and, feeling a little smug and worldly we bought our visas and walked across the border to the casino town of Poipet.        

             Waiting in the long line at Cambodian immigration, we got talking to Alison and Eric, an American couple who were also bound for Siem Reap. The word on the street (i.e the Lonely Planet guide book) was that a bus from Poipet to Siem Reap would take around 5 hours while a share taxi was only 2 hours. We decided to join forces and, with the addition of a Japanese student whom I shall call Honda, we elbowed our way through the nagging bus touts and set off for the taxi rank.

With five passengers, I had hoped to find some sort of minivan thingy and the guy at the rank sort of implied that’s what we would get. So when an aging Corolla pulled up I took no notice and presumed that the smiling driver who was talking to us in Khmer was a sort of village idiot who’s job it was to drive wrecked cars to a machine known as the cubinater while amusing tourists with his mad hand gestures and idiosyncratic attitude to personal hygiene.

No such luck. Four of us squeezed in the back while Eric, who had a gimpy leg from a rock climbing accident, got in the front and fell asleep. The sweaty little UN that was the backseat spent the two hours chatting in the usual vaguely annoying but inescapable way of travellers everywhere.

 “Oh we did Laos last year…”

“…if you get a chance, you have to go to…”

“it wasn’t touristy at all…”

Honda was an air pollution student who had been in Bangkok looking for evidence of smog that, for some reason involving words that apparently don’t easily translate from Japanese, accumulates there after being blown from China and India. And here I was thinking that Bangkok was just a dirty craphole.

The name Siem Reap means 'Thailand defeated'. Don't say I never teach you anything.

When we arrived in Siem Reap (“yeah, it’s a bit touristy you know? Not very authentic, but, like, a pretty mellow vibe… oh and you have to see Angkor Wat”), it was late afternoon and we checked into a hotel that Alicia and I had stayed at last year. An English guy had bought it and started doing it up. It was a cool place but he’d changed the name from the hilarious Wat’s Up Hotel (Wat as in Angkor Wat. Get it?).

We would have liked to stay in Siem Reap longer than one night to enjoy some cheap food and the lively little backpacker scene but it was Wednesday and we had to get to Phnom Penh to organise some Vietnamese visas before the weekend.

The following morning we hailed one of the unique and excellent Cambodian tuk-tuks, which are basically old fashioned carriages with their horses replaced by a Honda scooters, and caught a little bus to Phnom Penh. (Author’s note – all horses should be replaced with Honda scooters. I can steer a Honda but can’t make a delicious burger out of one. The reverse is true for horses.)

The trip, like most bus trips, was boring and uncomfortable and made me wish I was on a train. Or a motorbike. Or a share taxi. Well maybe not a share taxi.

Downtown Phnom Penh.

We stayed in Phnom Penh, got some laundry done and paid $30 for our Vietnamese visa (the same visa in Australia costs $75 dollars and takes weeks) then we wondered around for a couple of days getting hot and bored like everyone else.

Phnom Penh is a fairly pleasant little city but the only tourist attractions are a torture museum and getting drunk. I wasn’t up to seeing the incredibly moving killing fields again and I was still ill from a chest infection I’d picked up on the train to Thailand, so I’d decided to have an alcohol free week. I did manage to watch my first and last world cup cricket match between India and Australia with a pissed drug runner from Perth named Costa.

When our visas were ready we jumped on the next bus going east. The trip was enlivened slightly when Alicia had her mobile phone stolen and by the time we passed through the grandiose Vietnamese border complex and reached traffic-choked Saigon we had covered more than 3000kms and crossed five countries in less than three weeks.

We were in need of a spring roll and a lie down.

 

Pretending I can read near the mighty Mekong River