Corruption at the Border

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OK, this post is a bit dung, but I'm currently trying to write about Phnom Penh which I promise will be much more interesting (although horrific to read).
From Pai me and Gareth took the epic 32 hours journey from Pai to Chiang Mai to Bangkok to Poipet (rhymes with toilet and rightly so) and finally arriving in Siem Reap. Crossing into Cambodia was always going to be an interesting one as the border is widely acknowledged as being fantastically corrupt. Fortunately due to the handy talesofasia.com and having been in the even more wonderfully corrupt India, things went quite smoothly. On the tuk-tuk to the border you get taken to a fake embassy (yup) and you have to argue with the driver and the worker who comes out to greet you until they take you to the border. From here leaving Thailand is easy but getting the Cambodia visa is a pain in the ass. Despite having a sign above their heads saying that it costs $20, they demand 1000 Baht (approx $30), and they flat out refuse to admit that $20 is the correct price. Gareth got oddly angry with them and asked the guy for his name and threatened to report him (I'm going to put it down to the fact that we were very sleep depraved at this point). The guy didn't hugely care and ignored him. I eventually offered $20 plus 100 Baht which got us the visas almost straight away.

From here you oddly have to walk about 300 metres to find the shoddy little room where you get your visa stamped, apparently you sometimes get asked for more money here but it was ok for us. Next up is getting surrounded by bus drivers and taxi drivers spouting rubbish about getting a ride with them and the government is wrong and the government buses are all wrong and don't listen to them blah blah blah. Got on the government bus to the main transport hub and eventually got the regular bus to Siem Reap.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that when on the bus the corruption and scams may end, but hey, this is Asia! The bus drives at a phenomenally slow speed for the first 2 hours until you stop at their extremely overpriced service stop. You have to wait here for an hour and then slowly trundle onwards. All of this is so that the bus arrives in Siem Reap extremely late and in the dark, cleverly and conveniently down an alley where one of the guys on the buses guesthouse is; the comically named 'Hilton Guesthouse'. Refusing to even look at a room an upsetting some of the people there in the process for not doing so a large group of eventually made our way to D & D Angkor Guesthouse which was like a 3 star hotel in Europe, only for $4 a night between two of us!

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