Blogs from Poipet, North, Cambodia, Asia - page 2

De oversteek naar Cambodia was een schok. De armoede sloeg ons als een zweepslang in het gezicht. De wegen liggen half open of zijn zelfs onbestaande, de straatkindjes klampen je aan met de gevleugelde spreuk "One dollar?" (In Cambodia wordt naast de Riel vooral de Dollar gebruikt) en je ziet de mensen er houten karren voorttrekken, volgestouwd met waren. Achteraf bleek wel dat we meteen het armste stuk van Cambodia hadden gezien. De echt idyllische schoonheid van het land zagen we pas rond Kampot. De streek rond de grensovergang van Poipet wordt als het wilde westen van het land bestempeld. Voor we bij de Thaise grenspost aankwamen, werden we met een brommertje afgezet aan een hutje langs de baan, waar onze visa in orde werden gebracht. We vertrouwden het zootje eerst niet, maar na de visa ... read more

Apart from doing some travelling in Cambodia, I will be on a 10-day YMCA missionary project with a group of Citibanker volunteers. During this period, we will be teaching the English language to a group of youths in the Boys Brigade Learning Centre (BBLC) and to complete a section of road building across the village where BBLC is located. A 6-hour bus ride from Bangkok brings Lin and I to the Cambodian border at Poipet. It was dusty and sweltering under the extreme heat. We have been pre-warned about the bad road condition from Poipet to Siem Reap, and a bus ride could easily take up to 6-7 hours. Hence we had decided to buy some time by taking a taxi as we had an agenda to meet the rest of the group in town. We ... read more

What has happened in the last 36 hours, has to be the worst, well it could be worse, time ever. We set of yesterday at 8am from Surin Beach, Puket, Thailand for Puket Town to catch a bus to Bangkok. That all went well. We took the local bus to Puket Town and managed to get a bus to Bangkok which left at 2pm. Linda and I walked around the market too kill some time and head back to the bus station to get the bus to Bangkok. After a brief downpour, we boarded the bus and set off on our way. Only minutes into the journey, the bus broke down. Not surprising as the windscreen was full of huge cracks and kept together by tape. Anyway, as it turned out, there was a problem with ... read more

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 ... read more

We left Bangkok on the 05.30am bus to Aranyaprathet where we got a tuk-tuk 5km to the Thailand border with Cambodia. We had heard lots of horror stories about this crossing and so I was a little anxious about it! It turned out to be a very adventurous border crossing and car journey and we finally arrived in Siem Reap at around 4pm. Going through Thailand departure caused no problems, but then the fun began! We had to argue with the visa people as the visa is meant to be $20 but they claim it is 1000 baht ($30) or $25 or we would have to wait 4 hours! We knew about this scam so were expecting it so we refused to move from the window until he dealt with it! They kept shutting the window ... read more