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Published: January 18th 2011
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Our train
... in Bangkok Central Station, ready to depart. We had a pretty exciting trip from Bangkok, Thailand, to Siem Reap, Cambodia, and we are pretty proud of ourselves that we only got caught in one out of five scams...
We left our hostel at 4:40 this morning in order to be at the train station (that was within walking distance) before five because we did not know how many people there would be wainting for the ticket. Our train was to leave at 5.55. Unexpectedly, although the terminal had been full of people apparently spending the night there in order to get a ticket the next morning, we had our tickets within only ten minutes and then had to wait for almost an hour until our train left.
It took us about six hours to get to the border. It is only about 300km, but the train is not fast and stops very often. But finally, we arrived at Arunya Prathet, the town on the Thai side of the border. It is still quite far from the train station to the border, so we decided to take a tuk-tuk. Drivers usually charge tourists too much money for the ride, but we had managed to hook up with a Thai girl and her British boyfriend, so the Thai girl went on the tuk-tuk with us. Thus, we evaded the first scam: too much money for the tuk-tuk.
After a couple of minutes, the tuk-tuk driver stopped at a place where there was a sign saying "Cambodia" so that it looked as if this was the border. But we knew that we had to get out of Thailand first and the get into Thailand, so we knew this was the next scam. There are guides pretending to help you get across the border, and they charge you a lot of money for that "service". And they are really keen. The Thai girl as well as Mizzi and I had to resist on continuing before the tuk-tuk driver really did. Escaped scam no. 2.
Then we arrived at the real border, where we just followed all the other tourists and went straight to the border. We got our departure stamp into our passport by the Thai policemen, then continued to the Cambodian border. When entering Cambodia, you first have to fill in a quarantine form, then you continue to the place in which you get the visa. For the Cambodian visa, you have to bring a passport photo and 20 US Dollars. Policemen there at the border usually try to make a little more money by charging you additional money for it, but we refused to pay more and thus escaped scam no. 4. Once you have the visa, you have to fill in another form, queue, and then show your passport and the form again in order to get the final stamp.
And there we were, an hour after our arrival at the border, finally in Cambodia. The next step would be to catch a taxi or minibus with other tourists in order to get to Siem Reap, which is about two hours from the border. There is no public transport, so taxi or minibus is the only opportunity. We joined a big bunch of backpackers jumping on a free shuttle bus to the station from where taxis and minibusses would start off. Wait a minute. FREE? Yes, it was free. But they took us to a station in the middle of nowhere where we could not get away by ourselves. Damn. But we talked to five other backpackers and wanted to share a minibus. An organiser was found quickly, we paid and agreed that we would start right away.
But we didn't. We waited and waited and waited. And they kept on telling us that they wanted three more passengers before starting off. We got angry and tried to get our money back when finally we found another three passengers. So we headed off towards Siem Reap. We were still angry, but happy to be on the road finally. And our driver drove at high speed, using his horn whenever overtaking. So it was quite a noisy trip. When he stopped at a place in which there were many shops, we grew suspicious straight away because we thought he wanted to make us buy stuff in order to make him continue our way. But he didn't. He just wanted to go to the toilet, and a few minutes later, we continued.
We were sure he would not drop us off at our hostels, as agreed upon, but rather take us to another place and make us pay for tuk-tuks in order to make the last part of our way. And this is exactly what he did. We were angry, and when the minibus doors, opened, we started arguing straight away and told them that we were not willing to pay extra money for the tuk-tuks. But that hadn't been the intention. Transport to our hostels with the tuk-tuks was really free. We felt sorry for the tuk-tuk driver afterwards because we had not been very friendly to him, although what had happened before really had not been his fault. But when you've been ripped off once, you just get suspicious, I guess.
Anyway, once we were in our hostel, we decided just to relax for the rest of the evening. So we went for a walk and then had a nice dinner including a lovely dessert, followed by a cocktail. And now, believe me, we're both ready for bed.
Sorry, just one picture today. The internet connection is so bad here that it takes forever to upload them.
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