Poipet, Cambodia

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We crossed early in the morning into Poipet Cambodia. The town is like something from the wild west. The roads are up to your ankles in wet mud, which gets splashed all over your body by the hoards of passing decrepit cars, motorcycles, and donkey carts. Surrounding this is eight semi-run down casinos swamped with Thais looking to gamble away their Baht. The morning started out pretty bad. As you can imagine scams abound and we fell victim to one. From the border city in Thailand we hired a taxi to take us to the border, as Cambodia offers visas at the border without any need of arranging one in advance. The driver drives up to the Cambodian Consulate, and it was less than a mile from the border. He told us that we had to get our visa here. Seeing as it was the actual consulate for the kingdom of Cambodia, we thought nothing of it, and assumed the cost would be the same as we read. $20.
After going inside, the official told us it was $35 and this was the only place to get the visa. We reluctantly agreed, and paid the fee. The driver than drove us less than a mile from there to the actual border, where we saw the cambodian border agents issuing visas for $20! From that scam we hit another. In trying to get a bus to the city of Siem reap we were again scammed by a bus driver for a much higher fare than what should have normally been paid. The day was one big violation after another. Welcome to Cambodia.

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